Carpenters Revisited

[Mark-T]

Happy New Year Everyone!
As I've been reading the Boards the last few months, I've been particularly interested in the thread on Offering/Ticket to Ride.
As you know, years ago on my blog I've reviewed almost every studio album by Karen and Richard. Well, reading the Offering thread got me to thinking I needed to take a fresh look at the album.
So, my plan is to re-review each album. Starting with Offering. I'll post it this Thursday. I'd love to hear your comments.
Mark

 

[Guitarmutt]

I think it's a good idea. I think I might go back and listen to everything I have in chronological order too. It often happens that something new will jump out at me with a fresh listen. It's one thing I love about music: how layers and nuances you've missed for years suddenly sound clear.

 

[Mark-T]

Well said!

 

[Mark-T]

Here it is: Offering / Ticket to Ride Revisited. Love to hear your comments.

 

[Harry]

Mark's 2016 remix!

 

[newvillefan]

This is a very cool picture I hadn't seen before. Great stuff, look forward to more reviews!

 

[Mark-T]

Thanks, newvillefan!

 

[dvakman]

I have been listening to my recently obtained "remastered classics" CD of Offering for the past couple weeks. As a general rule, I'm more of a 60s pop guy than a 70s adult contemporary guy, so these early Carpenters albums really fit in more with my overall collection. Often viewed as a bit of an aberration in the Carpenters catalog, this 60s soft pop offering from the duo would slot in wonderfully with a playlist featuring groups like The Free Design, The Fifth Dimension,"Friends" era Beach Boys, The Association, and the most obvious antecedent from the A&M label, Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends. In the 1986 Richard interview which is podcasted on Itunes, Richard is asked about the impact of Paul Williams on the Carpenters discography, and Richard immediately switches gears to a discussion about Roger, his melodies and the influence the Circle of Friends album had on Carpenters at the time. You can definitely hear it in this album! Paul Williams is far more visible and well known these days, but IMHO it's the melodies that really shine in those later Nichols/Williams covers rather than Paul's lyrics, and Richard seems to recognize that.

Favorite tracks: Invocation / Benediction (on his website, Richard astutely compares these tracks to the Beach Boys' (in)famous intro "Our Prayer" from the Beach Boys' aborted SMiLE sessions), and All I Can Do (wonderfully existing halfway between the Zombies and the Fifth Dimension). I like Karen's ballads on this album, but they're not quite definitive in the way they will be in the albums to come, which is maybe one of the reasons that I think this album tends to be a little less popular than the other earlier albums among fans. I'm very open to the non-ballads though, so it still coheres well for me.

Favorite cover: Clancy (nice musicianship and in fact Karen's drumming shines throughout this album). Underrated track: What's the Use (nobody talks about this track, but I really like it: great chord changes, nice vocal interplay between the duo and a breezy soft pop approach).

Overall, I would rate this as one of my favorite Carpenters albums. It's definitely somewhere in my top five, but I haven't listened to all the other albums enough yet to definitively rank them.

Chris

 

[Don Malcolm]

Mark, I'm glad to see you retool your project and this is a fine first step. I think Chris (Dvakman) has just written some great material that would flesh out some of the areas in your essay that could benefit from additional context. What I can add is that, listening to Offering obsessively for an extended period of time, I hear all of the C's formative influences colliding in ambitious abandon--the melodic "post-folk oratorio" traces that had captured Richard's musical mind, perhaps torn equally between the differing harmonic approaches to be studied in the Beach Boys and in those Roger Nichols tracks. Add jazz, Bacharach (kicking in here in so many sidelong ways), Broadway (surely "Someday" was meant to be a key first act song for a musical never written), Baroque keyboard music, and (of course) the Beatles.

I can see why Richard downplays the record in the light of what followed, but this is an LP that showcases some massive talent that is just looking for a way to synthesize itself. Karen may not be quite the presence that took the world by storm less than a year later, but like Richard she is this close to it (I have thumb and index finger just barely apart as I write this) and reveals a feature of her skill set that we still tend to overlook: she's one of the greatest background singers ever. As Mark notes, "Turn Away" comes alive when she enters the arrangement, and the same thing happens on "What's The Use." These are not the highly polished songs that would follow, but they have a youthful ambition that Richard takes to higher ground in "artier" tracks such as "Another Song" and "Crescent Noon," pushing against the limits of vocal arrangement in search of that spiritual sound that first manifests on Offering in the wonderful "Invocation."

And I agree with Mark and Chris about "Clancy"--I'm not sure that the average music fan is ready to deal with the idea that Richard actually found a way to successfully assimilate this song into the Carpenters' oeuvre. Makes you wish he'd done it with a number of other contemporary tracks, doesn't it? As always, it's the jazz inflections that seal the deal--the two kids are cookin' at the end of this song, reminding us that they both could really play. It's a toss-up for me between Richard's outro here on "Clancy" and his funky-fried final run on "Help!" as to my favorite moment in terms of his all-too-shortlived "flying fingers" period, but both of them should remind us that he could have a heavyweight jazz pianist with nothing more than the snap of his fingers. Instead, he had a sister who was one of the greatest singers of all time, and we all know where that led. But I think Mark has reaffirmed what many of us have been saying--the more familiar one becomes with Offering, the better it becomes. It's not Close to You, of course--which really is a landmark LP and should be in the Top 50 for all of rock/pop history--but it's darned good (and unique to boot).

 

[Mark-T]

Thank you both, Chris and Don, for your insights and encouragement. I would love it and appreciate it if both of you posted your comments on the article directly on the blog as well. Why? My Carpenters posts are the most popular on the blog by a long shot- and I'd love to see younger or new readers experience through your words the depth of the Carpenters artistry as we each know it.

My background is not musical (other than by ear) in any way at all. I don't understand the structure of it, am not creative in that way, nor do I know techniques in studio artistry or anything else. I'm just an ordinary guys who is a passionate fan... with a few great Carps stories to tell, including meeting them and touring A&M Records in the late 80s.

So for all you folks who read these reviews- and I thank you- please do share your thoughts there as well. They are YOUR insights, and they fit there quite well!

 

[dvakman]

Hi Mark, I tried posting my comments on your blog but I'm not sure if it worked.

 

[Mark-T]

They have arrived and are posted. THANK YOU!