"Critical acclaim came too late for The Carpenters," states a somber Todd Nathanson at the beginning of his TrainWreckords episode on the duo's brave failure Passage. Indeed, they were probably an even bigger joke than ABBA in the era prior to their reassessment. A turning point was the release of If I Were a Carpenter in 1994. A rare tribute album from the nineties that didn't include Elton John, it featured indie and indie-adjacent stars such as Sonic Youth and Sheryl Crow doing unique but affectionate covers of some of Richard and Karen's most famous numbers.
Like a lot of tribute albums, If I Were a Carpenter is all over the place — though in this case more in terms of it being genre bending rather than its overall song quality. Most of the artists involved chose to stick to their own styles rather than mimicking The Carpenters. Babes in Toyland's "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" sounds exactly like a grungy take on prog space rock. Cracker's "Rainy Days and Mondays" brings a welcome slacker vibe that would never have occurred to the diligent Carpenters.
The song that sticks out the most is The Cranberries' "Close to You". The Irish quartet had only recently broken through with the yearning beauty of "Linger" and their next major hit, the less engaging "Zombie", would be released just a few days after the Carpenters' tribute album came out. They were arguably the most popular act to participate and they had chosen one of Richard and Karen Carpenter's signature tracks. With all due respect to Dolores O'Riordan, she was no Karen and it seemed like The Cranberries had bitten off more than they could chew.
(In retrospect, their version of "Close to You" also stands out due to O'Riordan's untimely death as well as her dangerously rake-thin appearance during the group's peak which in some ways mirrors Karen's tragic demise)
Listening to it today, however, I'm struck by wishing that The Carpenters' original was more like The Cranberries' remake. The latter feels like it was produced in house with little to no participation from anyone else which was seldom the approach taken by Richard and Karen. To be fair to them, they were young and easily swayed by record execs and studio producers. A&M Records' Herb Alpert and his colleague Jack Daughtery knew how to create hit singles and they were aware of how a Bachrach and David piece like "Close to You" needed to be drenched in strings and backing vocals since they'd all been recorded that way. What they missed out on was getting the best out of Richard and Karen: the older brother did the arrangement and played some lovely piano while the younger sister sang as angelically as any human ever has. You'd think those elements would have been more than enough. (That said, The Carpenters would continue to rely far too much on members of the Wrecking Crew and various jazz musicians to flesh out their albums up to Karen's death. In all likelihood, they probably never even considered the possibility of doing stripped-down duo sessions)
Call it being sick of Bachrach and David — and I've never been particularly fond of them in the first place — and/or the same damn LA studio cats who'd been playing on virtually everything over the past decade but I am done with this lush shit. Yes, somehow the same man who apologized for what Phil Spector had done to The Beatles' "Long and Winding Road" just over a week ago is now in open rebellion against flutes and oboes on Carpenters' records. Bloody hell, Richard and Karen aren't going to be treated well by me in the *checks notes* four reviews of their remaining Canadian number ones. Hopefully, this will pass before long. Either that or the critical reappraisal of The Carpenters is going to be taken to task no matter what the members of Sonic Youth will have you believe.
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