 The Carpenters Ten years ago it was socially impossible to admit to liking The Carpenters without setting yourself up for some serious mockery by a bunch of idiots (I'm not referring to anyone specific – no, really), but I'm glad that the pendulum has swung back, and now The Carpenters have their appropriate hipness factor. I never really got whether the "alternative rock" Carpenters fetish of the early mid-90s was "sincere" or "ironic" (I also don't "know" "whether" my "incessant" use of "quotation marks" is "funny" or "annoying"), but at least by now it seems that the stigma has been removed from liking the Carpenters just because the musis is so good. Of course, Karen Carpenter's life story adds a great deal of weight (er, wait, bad word choice) to the appreciation of the songs, but even on their own, these are excellent, classic performances from one of the most genuinely original groups to come out of American pop, ever. Karen's voice is amazing, utterly perfect and bizarrely expressive, filled with melancholy and yet perfectly friendly and accessible. I think it's hilarious that so-called "experts" like the Rolling Stone album guide dismiss the group as sappy, conservative crap, when you compare these songs to, say, the Guess Who or Joe Walsh, and the quality differential is enormous. The Carpenters have been routinely attacked for simply doing what they do – and it is silly to consider them anti-rock when they never purported to be anything but good, impeccably produced pop, closer to Singers Unlimited or even the Beach Boys than to the Eagles or John Lennon, neither of whom ever produced anything as transcendent as "Hurting Each Other," "Superstar," or "Top of the World." The Singles 1969-1973 collects all the huge hits from the band's golden era, before the well of inspiration began to dry up. This is truly an "all-killer, no-filler" type of CD, a real 70s essential, right up there with Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits and Bicentennial Nigger by Richard Pryor. Wait, I can't follow that logic either. Let's go to the next paragraph. So many great songs here: "Close to You," "We've Only Just Begun," "Yesterday Once More," and the underrated "It's Gonna Take Some Time," "For All We Know" and "Sing." Even "Ticket to Ride" is well-done, overflowing with pristine harmonies and perhaps the cleanest drums ever recorded. Richard Carpenter's production and arranging instincts have resulted in so many awesome moments, it's nearly ridiculous. I say, let the man have his pill addiction, if he can make music like this. For me, The Singles is the best single Carpenters disc if you have to own only one – there are a couple two-disc anthologies that are appealing too but may just be too much of a good thing. Actually, I think they have released a more comprehensive singles collection recently, but I'll stick with this one, if only for the nostalgia of having it on 8-track as a kid. This disc clocks in at 41 minutes, all of it great, and I never find myself inching toward the fast-forward button, even when the children's chorus kicks in on "Sing." These songs have their cheesiness, true, but it's such an enveloping form of cheese that it's hard to argue, especially when the cheese turns deadly serious on cuts like the amazing "Hurting Each Other" – as perfectly executed as anything done by any of your so-called rock critic's darlings. You think Beck will ever produce one song even close? I don't. The proliferation of electric pianos, strings, and harmonies makes this a perrenial favorite, perfect for any type of mellow mood. This is simply as good as pop gets. The dubious opening of track 1 ("We've Only Just Begun") with a recreation of the opening of "Close to You" is a bit odd and disconcerting, but a small quibble. As my grampa always says, "Them anorectics shore make some good music." (Crowd hisses uncontrollably.)
Review by Trudi Transplant |