The Carpenters

Reviewed by TenTillDeath:

The record that finally broke the highly criticized Carpenters duo into mainstream American airwaves; self titled, also known as the Tan Album.

This release would prove to be the most successful venture up to this point in The Carpenter’s ventures as their previous albums lead to disappointing sales and highly critical reviews. This album features some of The Carpenters most infamous songs such as: Rainy Days & Mondays, For All We Know, and Superstar.

This album features easy to understand songwriting that somehow evokes strong emotion and works perfectly well with Karen Carpenter’s voice. This becomes very apparent in the opening track “Rainy Days & Mondays” with lyrics such as “hanging around, nothing to do but frown.”  Many of the songs on this album features sad writings about romantic lies (Superstar), romanticism (For All We Know) and other themes of romance and sadness throughout the record.

Karen Carpenter’s voice is considered to be one of the best female voices in all of American singer song-writing. On this album, it heavily shines especially on Rainy Days & Mondays where Karen Carpenter makes you feel the words “rainy days and Mondays always bring me down.” On ”For All We Know,” Karen takes on a more motherly/sweet voice which makes you almost want to reminisce on times that you as a listener were in love. Karen’s voice also harmonizes perfectly with her brother Richard Carpente throughout this album. On the song San Jose, The Carpenters harmonize all over this progressive song to the point where it’s like they’re showing off how well they harmonize together; and damn do they harmonize so well. Though this album features Karen’s bold vocal abilities, the duo’s great harmony skills, and Richard’s great composition skills, there are some set backs that make this record fall flat at points.

The Carpenter’s have been heavily criticized as being “just another ordinary band.” Some of the songs such as Saturday, and a plethora of songs on both sides of this record feel as if they should have been left off of the record or put on a different project. Although Richard Carpenter has great singing abilities and composition skills, his solo songs on this project feel out of place and make it feel as if this is a Karen Carpenter album and not a album by a duo.  Many of these songs sung by Richard or The Carpenters are instantly forgettable and it shows decades later.

Our final rating for this project is a 3.5 out of 5.