The Best Carpenters Album of 'Em All

Pretty much anyone who knows me knows I love the Carpenters with a 36-year old intensity that has never really slacked off (seriously, the Carps were the first music I loved, even as an infant. Ask anyone in my family!).

For years I wondered just what it was about the Carpenters that I instantly grasped on to. Was it Karen's melancholy vocal delivery (and let's face it, no one ever sounded like Karen Carpenter before or since)? Or was it the fact that the songs were amazingly well-crafted pop tunes that have since become standards?

It's been over 30 years now since I first heard Horizon (released in 1975). And, like the rest of the Carpenters canon, it hasn't really aged one bit. Richard produced all their music so it would be timeless, and time has proven he was right. Although for many the Carpenters are the 1970s incarnate, their music isn't dated. Of course, at the time, it was incredibly unhip to like them at all--but some revisionist thinking through the years has cast the Carpenters in a much more favorable light. The bottom line is that no one made records that sounded this good.

Of all their albums, Horizon is, to me, the most cohesive and the most mature, and therefore, my most favorite. With the exception of the hits "Only Yesterday" and the number-one "Please Mr. Postman," and the B-side "Happy," the songs are lush, long, languid and lovely. The album is "bookended" by two piano-and-vocal-only songs, about a minute long each, called "Aurora" and "Eventide," and between those bookends is some of Karen's finest vocal work. She sings almost exclusively in her rich lower register (for years, before my voice changed, it was way too low for me to sing along to!). The production is crystalline; she sounds like she's sitting right beside you. And when you factor in that she was barely 25 years old when she sang these songs, it really does make you think--where did that voice come from?

Horizon was probably the last "big selling" Carps record...the quality of their output diminished significantly, with few exceptions, following 1975. But I think it's the one that best typifies what made them so great. I loved it when I was six--and I love it today.

Standout tracks:

1. I Can Dream, Can't I
2. Solitaire
3. Desperado
4. Love Me For What I Am
5. Aurora/Eventide
6. Only Yesterday