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Richard Carpenter:
"The a cappella (sic) Invocation beginning side one echoes the choral religiosity of the Beach Boys’ Our Prayer."
Here, then, the Beach Boys' Our Prayer.....
Man, did this guy nail it or what?!"This is Mike Oliver's weekly My Vinyl Countdown"
"Karen on the other hand had the voice of an angel. A relaxed contralto or alto,
I don't know much about these music types. But it was different from the high timbre styles popular today.
It was soft, deep and ever so slightly sultry. Like Mom putting you to sleep with a lullaby. It was butter.
This Ticket to Ride album is their first, and it was originally called ''Offering.'
It suffers from too much of brother Richard singing and overdone arrangements.
It was almost as if they didn't know what they had with Karen's voice."
Source:
My Vinyl Countdown cruises with Cars, Camper and Cash to take skinheads bowling
Yes and no. I think you guys rag on Richard a bit too much. Let's face it, there are few singers who even come close to Karen--all the female singers referenced here on the board as points of comparison have either technique or personality, but virtually none of them have both. Karen had it all, and it's there on OFFERING. I think Richard knew what he had on his hands--it was clear from 1966, but there were a whole bunch of reasons why it took a bit more time to coalesce. Karen did not have a 100% handle on her singing persona at the outset--recall that it took three tries to nail "Close to You." But after that, it was like clockwork for her. OFFERING is a fine record, with really only a couple of hinky Richard vocals getting in the way--but even on those tracks, you get something you never hear so clearly again on subsequent LPs--Karen as possibly the greatest backup singer ever. There are some over-arranged moments, but more in the vocals than in the instrumentals--and it's because the two of them were ambitious as hell with respect to establishing their singing credentials (the Beach Boys influence coming to the fore here).Man, did this guy nail it or what?!
Yes and no. I think you guys rag on Richard a bit too much. Let's face it, there are few singers who even come close to Karen--all the female singers referenced here on the board as points of comparison have either technique or personality, but virtually none of them have both. Karen had it all, and it's there on OFFERING. I think Richard knew what he had on his hands--it was clear from 1966, but there were a whole bunch of reasons why it took a bit more time to coalesce. Karen did not have a 100% handle on her singing persona at the outset--recall that it took three tries to nail "Close to You." But after that, it was like clockwork for her. OFFERING is a fine record, with really only a couple of hinky Richard vocals getting in the way--but even on those tracks, you get something you never hear so clearly again on subsequent LPs--Karen as possibly the greatest backup singer ever. There are some over-arranged moments, but more in the vocals than in the instrumentals--and it's because the two of them were ambitious as hell with respect to establishing their singing credentials (the Beach Boys influence coming to the fore here).
It isn't just Karen being "freed" or made into the primary singer that jump starts things on CLOSE TO YOU--it's also Richard upping his game as an incredibly accomplished and versatile arranger. When you put those two things together, you have the type of phenomenon capable of starting a commercial counter-trend in the then-contemporary music scene that was predisposed to resist what they were doing at virtually all costs. They just steamrollered them anyway. And Richard found the followup songs to keep that steamroller rolling ("Rainy Days and Mondays," "Superstar").
I'd agree to an extent with what you say. It's worth bearing in mind as well that several of the songs Richard sang on Offering ('Turn Away', 'Your Wonderful Parade') weren't really suited to Karen's vocals (although, then again, she did a superior job on 'Get Together' on Your Navy Presents). However, the more I listen to Offering/Ticket to Ride, the more I wonder whether the original intention was not actually to have Karen as the main lead singer, but for them to have split the lead vocals more evenly (with Karen presumably handling the ballads as she did on Offering but not necessarily the other tracks) and for it to have been more of a 'group' in the sense of there being no default lead singer.
That would then mean that Karen would stay at the drums as part of the 'band' rather than the front person. It was only when they hit big with singles featuring Karen very much on lead that it was necessary to change the strategy - remember, she was essentially forced out front during live performances because she was singing the hits and the audience couldn't see her and had identifed her as the focal point that they wanted to see. As the female in the group, she may have received that extra attention anyway, but I'm not convinced that her more subdued role on Offering is due to her not having completely developed and refined her singing style by that point.
She seemed to reach her "world class" voice on the Tan Album.
I think you guys rag on Richard a bit too much. Let's face it, there are few singers who even come close to Karen--all the female singers referenced here on the board as points of comparison have either technique or personality, but virtually none of them have both. Karen had it all, and it's there on OFFERING. I think Richard knew what he had on his hands--it was clear from 1966, but there were a whole bunch of reasons why it took a bit more time to coalesce. Karen did not have a 100% handle on her singing persona at the outset--recall that it took three tries to nail "Close to You." But after that, it was like clockwork for her. OFFERING is a fine record, with really only a couple of hinky Richard vocals getting in the way--but even on those tracks, you get something you never hear so clearly again on subsequent LPs--Karen as possibly the greatest backup singer ever. There are some over-arranged moments, but more in the vocals than in the instrumentals--and it's because the two of them were ambitious as hell with respect to establishing their singing credentials (the Beach Boys influence coming to the fore here).
It isn't just Karen being "freed" or made into the primary singer that jump starts things on CLOSE TO YOU--it's also Richard upping his game as an incredibly accomplished and versatile arranger. When you put those two things together, you have the type of phenomenon capable of starting a commercial counter-trend in the then-contemporary music scene that was predisposed to resist what they were doing at virtually all costs. They just steamrollered them anyway. And Richard found the followup songs to keep that steamroller rolling ("Rainy Days and Mondays," "Superstar").
Close to You a "patchy" album? IMHO, it stands among their very best and is stronger than A Song for You.
Close to You a "patchy" album? IMHO, it stands among their very best and is stronger than A Song for You.
It was obvious that Richard had more time to review what songs to include in A Song For You than he did for Close To You. The latter was rushed to completion with several songs from their Spectrum repertoire.Yeah, I’d say patchy - stylistically. It’s not as consistently brilliant as A Song For You. Tracks like Crescent Noon (Moon? ), Maybe It’s You, A Reason To Believe...nice album tracks but they don’t always hang together as cohesively as the tracks on the fourth album. There’s a flow and a seam on that album that’s unbeaten on any other. There are two obvious standout tracks on Close To You but A Song For You is full of them.
It was obvious that Richard had more time to review what songs to include in A Song For You than he did for Close To You. The latter was rushed to completion with several songs from their Spectrum repertoire.
Presumably an A&M promo distributed to radio....
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsyv5ZFx6s8