The seeming inevitability that is one hallmark of art. A “seamless” perfection, the result of so much painstaking effort, so well conceived it seems effortless—and hence is criticized as “simple.” “Please Mr. Postman”: Caucasian angst. What we critics call “quotidian sorrow and joy.” I love the Carpenters.
THOSE UNFAMILIAR WITH the Carpenters’ origins might be startled to hear their atypical debut LP, released as Offering and later retitled Ticket to Ride. Some of the later elements of the Carpenters’ style are present, to be sure—a relatively polished production, Karen’s distinctive lead on many tracks, and even a foreshadowing of their subsequent breakthrough single in the lyric of the Richard Carpenter/John Bettis song, “Someday,” in which Karen sings the very precognitive phrase “close to you”—but the record is unmistakably a product of the poprock mainstream of its time.
The a cappella “Invocation,” beginning side one echoes the choral religiosity of the Beach Boys’ “Our Prayer.” “Your Wonderful Parade” is prefaced by Richard declaiming a circus barker’s sleazy-surrealistic monologue à la Herman Hesse via Joseph Byrd, leader of the art-rocking United States of America; while the song itself could have been written by Van Dyke Parks for Harper’s Bizarre. Other influences discernible throughout include the Mamas and the Papas, We Five, and early Nilsson. There is restrained use of the then-chic toy, phasing. There are tempo changes; soft but extended jazz-like solos; shimmering Buffalo Springfield-type guitar—and a Buffalo tune, “[Nowadays] Clancy [Can’t Even Sing]”; as well as the folk-rock staple [“Get Together.”] Offering tends toward being the sort of album many rock critics were encouraging at the time: a post-folk, soft-psychedelic Southern Californian mini-oratorio.
By the second album there has been an enormous change. With Close to You, Richard and Karen have become what the world knows as “the Carpenters,” and although they have not yet acquired all the refinements of their style and sound, they are firmly based in them. With two huge singles—the title song, and the even more definitively-Carpenters “We’ve Only Just Begun”—they have hit their stride, and strongly. With this disc they simultaneously attract the concentrated affection of their newfound fans and the hostility of another segment that has distrusted them from first hearing. They are both loved and hated from the very moment they are noticed at all. Why?
American popular music has always reflected the aspirations and intended identities of its listeners. The mothers and fathers of rock criticism in the Sixties “discovered” that fans were buying more than music; they were purchasing lifestyles. But it was ever thus: Okies paid for Hank Williams’ beatific moonstruck grin as well as for his 78s. Swing nuts must have made some connection between [Gene] Krupa’s goofy gum chewing and those crazy drum choruses; his attitude was as attractive as his art. So here are these neatly dressed kids, a polite-seeming brother-and-sister team, materializing like a weird hallucination in the midst of acid-rock and offering their alternative to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” singing of all things a bank commercial. The grumbling began, and grew louder in proportion with their success. You’d think they were an arm of the government, the way some people reacted! What was it they thought the Carpenters represented? Domesticity, perhaps? The nuclear family? Saturdays spent shopping for sofas at Sears? Capitalism itself? There were those so turned off by what they thought they detected beneath the music that they spoke of the Carpenters as the enemy.
The enemy. Imagine. Poor Karen and Richard! Just trying to make their music … All this rancor….
The music, though, continued to improve. It reached a new level with the album, A Song for You. This was perhaps the first Carpenters LP to receive a very great deal of loving care, and it remains their finest overall effort, as well as being Richard’s favorite. The material is excellent, the arrangements and production are faultless, and Karen sings with increased maturity and sophistication.
Throughout they had remained true to their vision, their identity, their roots. Eventually they paid tribute to the latter with great style, in the extended oldies medley that comprises the entire second side of [Now & Then]. Hearing Richard and Karen interpret the Beach Boys at one generational remove is similar to witnessing the Wilson family cop psychic riffs from Chuck Berry; there is an homage here to truths learned from things of the past, and there is also distance enough for a personal expression to have developed. Through the format of guitarist Tony Peluso’s flawless evocation of the spirit of deejay-dominated Sixties pop radio (as effective in its brief duration as the entire Cruisin’ series), the Carpenters distill the heady, sometimes comic, but ultimately poignant essence of our adolescent fantasies. Those who criticized this medley for not having the identical production values [of] a Ronettes single were very far from an appreciation of its special value. It would be a pointless exercise to recreate these numbers note-for-note; Karen and Richard instead summon up those aspirations and illusions of adventure and happiness that made our sophomore years bearable even as they catalogued our frustrations. (We’ll have fun-fun-fun—and our day will come.) The fact that Richard himself is now a skillful producer of pop dreams satisfyingly completes some kind of circle.
Now the Carpenters have finished recording what is in many ways their most ambitious album to date: Horizon. The technology alone has consumed a great deal of energy, with scores of separate mikings making the production definitively “state-of-the-art.” But above, before, and beyond the sound—which Carpenters’ aficionados will expect to be impeccable anyway—is the music. Some of it is already familiar to us: the hit singles “Please Mr. Postman” and “Only Yesterday.” (Notice how easily and quickly the Carpenters made the transition from the unblinking optimism of “We’ve Only Just Begun” to the sweet wistfulness of “Yesterday Once More” and “Only Yesterday”; apparently the existential distance was never that great.) Other tracks include a 1949 Andrews Sisters tune, “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” which features the Billy May Orchestra; a song Richard’s collaborator, John Bettis, considers their best-ever composition, “([I’m] Caught Between) Goodbye and I Love You”; a four-and-a-half-minute version of Neil Sedaka’s “Solitaire”; and—most exciting of all—the Don Henley-Glenn Frey ballad, “Desperado.” Richard is expecting the biggest critical sneers yet when the latter track is released, because of its “underground” popularity (though a highly respected song, it has not yet been a hit single). He may be happily surprised. A critical reevaluation of sorts seems to have begun with the release in late ’73 of The Singles, the Carpenters’ greatest hits collection.
Whether or not “Desperado” gains the nod from Rolling Stone, it certainly will please those attuned enough to Karen and Richard’s work to be appreciative of exciting developments in it. Karen’s singing on this track is especially moving; she utilizes a hitherto-unheard lower register, with startling effectiveness.
Horizon is about to be released as I write this. I have a hunch it’s going to make my summer.