⭐ Official Review [Album]: "CARPENTERS" S/T (SP-3502)

HOW WOULD YOU RATE THIS ALBUM?

  • ***** (BEST)

    Votes: 27 36.0%
  • ****

    Votes: 38 50.7%
  • ***

    Votes: 8 10.7%
  • **

    Votes: 1 1.3%
  • *

    Votes: 1 1.3%

  • Total voters
    75
I definitely had to warm up to the song, but now I almost never skip it. Songs on any album I like to refer to as "cups of tea". Not every song is everybody's cup of tea. People love "Rainy Days and Mondays" across the board because its flavor is agreeable. A song like "Druscilla Penny" or albums like "Hush" or "MIA" are a more obscure flavor that some people like and some people don't. That's what makes forums -- and life in general -- all the more interesting!

That's a novel way of looking at it. In that case, "Rainy Days and Mondays" is a premium loose leaf Darjeeling, and "Druscilla Penny" is a Lipton teabag! :tea:
 
So peaking around on this person's u tube channel I found this? Who is singing this? It's pretty cool but short and sounds very 70's. I wonder if this was before or after Carpenters version?

 
"Knowing When To Leave" is one of the big tunes from the Burt Bacharach musical PROMISES, PROMISES. The original US cast album had Jill O'Hara singing the song. Betty Buckley did the London cast version. Both were available at one time by Bruce Kimmel's Kritzerland Records.

I've always preferred Jill O'Hara's rendition from that Broadway soundtrack. I'm sure that many artists sang that Bacharach tune at one time or another. Burt himself recorded an instrumental version that I'm very fond of.
 
"Knowing When To Leave" is one of the big tunes from the Burt Bacharach musical PROMISES, PROMISES. The original US cast album had Jill O'Hara singing the song. Betty Buckley did the London cast version. Both were available at one time by Bruce Kimmel's Kritzerland Records.

I've always preferred Jill O'Hara's rendition from that Broadway soundtrack. I'm sure that many artists sang that Bacharach tune at one time or another. Burt himself recorded an instrumental version that I'm very fond of.

Dionne Warwick also recorded it on her 1970 I'll Never Fall in Love Again album:



It's one of my favourite Barcharach/David songs, but it's not been covered all that often, probably because it's pretty difficult to sing without getting out of breath. Always loved Karen singing it, even if it was taken at quite a lick on the 1971 medley (although that probably helped with getting through all those lyrics and being able to take a breath!).
 
I finally figured out who that artist was singing the above...apparently it's a lot newer than I had thought lol I guess the video through me off with the age. It's a singer called Liz Callaway from an album in 2001. Hearing this song done is this kind of way makes one think how Karen could have turned a song like this into a "show" tune on broadway.

 
When the song "There's Always Something There To Remind Me" ends, it goes "You'll always be a part of me.... whoa, whoa, whoa, wahhhhh". That part has been sticking in my head when I hear that song. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
When the song "There's Always Something There To Remind Me" ends, it goes "You'll always be a part of me.... whoa, whoa, whoa, wahhhhh". That part has been sticking in my head when I hear that song. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
Yes AM Matt! I think all Carpenter fans on this forum know that particular passage oh so well (I know I do). It is indelibly marked on our brains:)!!
 
While the "Tan" Album is not in my top five non-christmas LP's (H,ASFY, CTY,P,L),
the song (A Place To) Hideaway ....is among my favorite Carpenters' songs...
here is an earlier version (1967, Gaylord & Holiday):
 
^I hadn't heard a previous recording of A Place to Hideaway before.

Goes to show the C's were very much influenced by the music of the 60s.
Eclectic tastes that's for sure. Richard was drawn to these offbeat songs and polish them.

"Knowing when to leave" on the 1980s medley is the best, imo! 1971 version is a bit too quick.
 
While the "Tan" Album is not in my top five non-christmas LP's (H,ASFY, CTY,P,L),
the song (A Place To) Hideaway ....is among my favorite Carpenters' songs...
here is an earlier version (1967, Gaylord & Holiday):

Wow! So even this song was a remake?!?!
 
Wow! So even this song was a remake?!?!

From what I recall, Richard and Karen met Randy Sparks, the song's composer, while they were gigging with Spectrum back in 1967/1968 and heard him perform the song then. They obviously recalled it years later.

Unlike their cover versions post-1975, it seems that for nearly all of the songs they covered early in their career, Richard came up with his own arrangement which was often very different from the original version(s).
 
Carpenters (Tan Album)
Stereo Review Oct 1971

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Would be interesting to know the credentials of these music “critics”. Any one of us could find a singer or group that we don’t particularly like a rip on them and then glorify what we like. There is no objectivity in what was written. Who died and left you the critic god.
Good grief
 
Would be interesting to know the credentials of these music “critics”. Any one of us could find a singer or group that we don’t particularly like a rip on them and then glorify what we like. There is no objectivity in what was written. Who died and left you the critic god.
Good grief
Right and they hide behind their initials...it just goes to show Karen and Richard had their fair share of critics...too many in my opinion.
 
Carpenters (Tan Album)
Stereo Review Oct 1971

tIjvmP5.png

*Yawn* as with the review I read in the other thread, this is typical critical drivel. These critics seem to read each other's critiques and then try to one-up the last one with ever more pretentious and gratuitously insulting nonsense.
 
*Yawn* as with the review I read in the other thread, this is typical critical drivel. These critics seem to read each other's critiques and then try to one-up the last one with ever more pretentious and gratuitously insulting nonsense.

I think a lot of music reviewers writing in the 1970s and 1980s used reviews as a means to show off their supposed cleverness rather than to actually review the music they were listening to. I remember reading through a load of Robert Christgau's reviews and finding them largely incomprehensible, so ellipticially and oddly were they phrased.

Given that this era was the Carpenters' heyday, I don't imagine there are all that many contemporary reviews of their albums out there that actually review the music on the album rather than obsessing about their image.
 
I think a lot of music reviewers writing in the 1970s and 1980s used reviews as a means to show off their supposed cleverness rather than to actually review the music they were listening to. I remember reading through a load of Robert Christgau's reviews and finding them largely incomprehensible, so ellipticially and oddly were they phrased.

Given that this era was the Carpenters' heyday, I don't imagine there are all that many contemporary reviews of their albums out there that actually review the music on the album rather than obsessing about their image.

I hear you. Critics in general, even today, seem to find some kind of validity or pleasure in wording their opinions in the most inflammatory way possible. It's not enough to say "I think this music is bland." It's more "clever" to say something that makes insulting comparisons and often personally insulting to the artist.
 
Unfortunately, the A&M Press Marketing
generally played- up their wholesome "image."
The record/music reviewers did not invent that to "pick up on."
The publicity department of A&M over-sold it.
 
Unfortunately, the A&M Press Marketing
generally played- up their wholesome "image."
The record/music reviewers did not invent that to "pick up on."
The publicity department of A&M over-sold it.

Absolutely. I've been rereading 'Little Girl Blue' recently and some of those A&M press releases are beyond parody in terms of their furtherance of the 'goody-fourshoes' image. It's all 'they're nice, respectful kids, they don't do drugs, they respect their elders, they're not going to threaten the establishment'. There's even a press release issued by the record company detailing their (then) new house in Newville Avenue and how it had been furnished/decorated - why on earth would anyone want details on that!? Surely it couldn't have been that hard to depict them as 'normal' without going so absurdly overboard.

Certainly, being brother and sister would always have attracted some heckles from the press, but it seems alas that A&M went out of their way to paint them in as sticky sweet and anodyne fashion as possible. The image problem originated in their own camp rather than being foisted upon them by the critics.
 
I don’t understand why music that makes noise is innovative and music that communicates emotion is not. Does it have to raise “hell” for a critic to enjoy?
 
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