The Ultimate Collection

For some reason the Carpenters have been passed by the revival of other 70's and early 80's acts such as Abba and are dismissed as not much more than hotel lobby music by some. Easy listening is sometimes derided as a lesser musical genre yet you can't make music as good as the Carpenters did without being supremely talented. I think it is long past time for a Carpenters revival and for a younger audience to discover this wonderful music.Those already familiar with their music don't need to read a review of this disc, the track list is all they need to know. For younger people, or even those who let the music go past them when they were younger the Carpenters were a brother and sister act, Karen and Richard Carpenter, combining Karen's painfully beautiful voice with Richard's writing and arrangement skills to produce music which was never less than good and which at its best was some of the finest popular music ever recorded, and I say that advisedly and not as a throwaway comment.Karen Carpenter died of complications caused by her anorexia at only 32 years of age, although remembered for her wonderful voice she was also a good drummer. When writing reviews it is easy to fall into hyperbole and using superlatives cheaply, but Karen Carpenter was a staggeringly fine singer, her voice was velvety smooth with a gorgeous clarity and warmth and a very distinctive tone. Her delivery was perfect and everything she sang felt so natural, unforced and was delivered with just the right emotional depth. I know it is easy to say that an artist is unique or special, and to add the appellation of "great" but if any singer deserved such accolades it was Karen Carpenter. Richard Carpenter has lived in the shadow of his sister yet he was not just a straight man in the background, he was a very accomplished musician and very few people have been able to match his arrangements. Their music was beautifully crafted and delivered with a sense of precision, or perhaps perfection might be a better word, yet it never sounded clinical or lacking in emotion, to achieve that takes a lot of talent and skill.This double disc includes all the well known hits and a few not so well known numbers. They are arranged chronologically, which I think is sensible and it allows you to follow their musical development. How to pick stand out tracks from such a collection? There are so many special songs here, my own favourite is still "Goodbye to Love", the words are even more poignant given Karen Carpenter's life story, her voice never sounded better and there is "that" guitar solo by Tony Peluso, no matter how many times I listen to this song it moves me. Although Karen Carpenter could deliver melancholic love songs with aplomb, she could also sing more upbeat songs, Hank Williams "Jambalaya" has been covered by more acts than I can name yet to me the definitive version is that by the carpenters which is wonderfully uplifting and joyous. One of the more unusual songs is "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" a cover of a Klaatu song, one of the only real criticisms I have of any Carpenters song is the irritating radio DJ intro to this track yet once the song starts it has a riff which just enters the head and which remains wonderfully musical. There are so many other memorable songs, "We've Only Just Begun", "Rainy Days and Mondays", "Top of the World", "Please Mr Postman", "Solitaire"....it goes on, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!I think any music lover should have a collection of the Carpenters greatest hits, and this is a perfect collection. I bought this CD to replace an earlier greatest hits disc which somebody was kind enough to "borrow" and fail to return and it hasn't disappointed. The only reason I rate this as 5* is because I can't give it more than 5*.

Clear recording, great music, really good for a quiet afternoon or with housework.Great voice.Recommend

Incredible that I have loved The Carpenters since first hearing them in the 1970's and yet didn't own any of their music. I have now remedied that by buying this wonderful double disk CD collection. Chock full of their hits plus a few songs that I didn't know by them but all are wonderful, beautifully recorded and of high quality. There are 35 songs over the two disks and they instantly take me back to my childhood in the 70's. Karen Carpenter's voice was a joy to behold and hearing it again now still knocks me sideways. What a warm, sultry and beautiful sound she had. No auto tune or studio 'fixes' to be heard here. This was back in an age where you could either sing it well or not and boy could she sing it. An absolute belter of a collection and highly recommended.

I bought this because I was making a 1970s compilation album and you can't have that without the Carpenters. This collection has some tracks not on Carpenters Gold, such as There's a Kind of Hush, Top of the World and that Barry Manilow song, Trying to Get the Feeling Again. It's also more recent, so it won't have that grain in your headphones sound that older CDs sometimes have. The versions of Close to You are the originals, whereas they're a bit tinkered with on the Gold album.I can't fault the sound, but digital does exchange warmth for clarity, not really great when the Carpenters are all about the warm sound, though at least Karen's superb vocals stand up to scrutiny and then some. Again, with the remaster there's the sense that the music isn't big enough to fill the new space provided, all the bits are comparmentalised rather than emeshed. On Only Yesterday and a few others you have castonettes; on vinyl they would be nicely in the background. This kind of digital remaster doesn't do background, so it's like having a bunch of crikets chirping annoyingly from your left speaker during the chorus.The songs are great, one classic after another and I got to thinking that they're just as good as Abba, and why haven't they got their own musical? The Carpenters seem to have fallen off the radar in the last decade. Then again, Abba's song titles are more memorable, crafting well-known words and phrases; Waterloo converts Napoleon's unexpected shock defeat into romantic submission, Mamma Mia is a begrudging crush, The Winner Takes it All is a poker game or bingo phrase, Knowing Me Knowing You - English self-deprecation. To read the titles is to conjur up the song, but you don't get that so much with the Carpenters hits. Yesterday Once More/Only Yesterday and so on.Furthermore, Abba songs are more upbeat and the Carpenters are very miserable, almost a parody of themselves. "Feeling sorry for myself and feeling old" as I think Rainy Days and Mondays begins. I mean, you can listen to that as a teenager, but any later in years and you'll be reaching for the shotgun. That said, Karen's impeccable vocals are so lush, and the vibe so middle class, that the songs aren't actually as depressing as more conventional pop.The Trying to Get that Feeling Again song is good, but it's Manilow's really, he owns it. It does move things along a bit, and sounds the most grown up of these songs, but thematically it's odd to have ol' Karen go from never being able to find love and giving up on it, to next thing bemoaning the lack of erotic frission with her hapless lover - it's a bit of a jolt to hear her implying about all the sex manuals she's been devouring. The worst song is Calling Interplanatary Craft, which is a nice riff which goes on and has a horrible 1970s DJ intro on it that lasts a whole minute and which isn't too easy to forward through. The chronological running order doesn't quite help either, you don't really want to start off with the dreary cover version of Ticket to Ride.

Superb album