Something about The Carpenters
"This is absolutely unacceptable. You should have told me this before I married you."
Arms crossed, pouty face. But I know she's joking. Casually mentioning that I actually like several of the songs by The Carpenters, I get the full HOW DARE YOU from my loving wife. She has good taste, so I accept her position.
Karen Carpenter was a tragic figure with a beautiful voice. The Carpenters wrote music that many would call anodyne, or sappy. Very much a product of their time, the sort of white bread pop songs they produced are easy to ridicule today in our aggressively cynical age. Ok, so I find as I get older that this sort of thing is more appealing to me. Gen X gets to slide into middle age sentimentality the same as the Boomers did.
So it was with much joy that I recently discovered a band annoying called Weyes Blood, fronted by singer-songwriter Natalie Mering. Their latest album, Titanic Rising, is pretty great!
Great if you suspect that Mering called the spirit of Karen Carpenter from the underworld with occult magic so we could have a new Carpenter's album in 2019.
Mering's voice is shockingly close to Karen Carpenter's in timbre, from her low range sultriness to the clarity of her contralto high notes. The orchestration is consciously arranged using period-correct instruments, from the strings, piano and synths to some slide guitar. For sure, there are a few modern production touches in these songs. But the heart and soul of this album is firmly in 1971. Buy it on vinyl, or 8-track.
Arms crossed, pouty face. But I know she's joking. Casually mentioning that I actually like several of the songs by The Carpenters, I get the full HOW DARE YOU from my loving wife. She has good taste, so I accept her position.
Karen Carpenter was a tragic figure with a beautiful voice. The Carpenters wrote music that many would call anodyne, or sappy. Very much a product of their time, the sort of white bread pop songs they produced are easy to ridicule today in our aggressively cynical age. Ok, so I find as I get older that this sort of thing is more appealing to me. Gen X gets to slide into middle age sentimentality the same as the Boomers did.
So it was with much joy that I recently discovered a band annoying called Weyes Blood, fronted by singer-songwriter Natalie Mering. Their latest album, Titanic Rising, is pretty great!
Great if you suspect that Mering called the spirit of Karen Carpenter from the underworld with occult magic so we could have a new Carpenter's album in 2019.
Mering's voice is shockingly close to Karen Carpenter's in timbre, from her low range sultriness to the clarity of her contralto high notes. The orchestration is consciously arranged using period-correct instruments, from the strings, piano and synths to some slide guitar. For sure, there are a few modern production touches in these songs. But the heart and soul of this album is firmly in 1971. Buy it on vinyl, or 8-track.
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