The Carpenters - Passage
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Artist: The CarpentersEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 1998-12-08
Music Label: A&M
Soundtracks:
- B'wana She No Home - The Carpenters, Franks, Michael
- All You Get from Love Is a Love Song - The Carpenters, Eaton, Steve
- I Just Fall in Love Again - The Carpenters, Dorff, Steve
- On the Balcony of the Casa Rosada/Don't Cry for Me Argentina - The Carpenters, Lloyd Webber, Andre
- Sweet, Sweet Smile - The Carpenters, Newton, Juice
- Two Sides - The Carpenters, Davis, Scott E.
- Man Smart (Woman Smarter) - The Carpenters, Span, Norman
- Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft - The Carpenters, Draper, Terry
Free Music Notes for Passage
Free Music Review: Too Bad, But A Noble Effort
Hit: 3 Stars
They owned the charts from 1970 to 1975. The only competitor they had in the 'most likely to get a hit' category was Elton John. Then came the 'superb' Horizon and the 'sublime' A Kind of Hush. And then came this eclectic work that gave the Carpenters the best and worst of all worlds.
Their last top twenty hit was "There's A Kind of Hush," which went to #12 in May 1976. That would have been a good achievement for almost anybody else. But the Carpenters were now in a slump from which they never recovered.
According to the inside liner notes of this album, they spent a whopping three months on it. When you consider that they spent 18 months on Horizon, perhaps the record company was in a hurry. But the simple truth is that by 1977, time was passing the timeless duo by. Indeed, the album's name "Passage" signifies what happens as the 'hit' Carpenters were replaced by the lounge crew in Las Vegas. It happens to everybody, and the sun began to set on Karen and Richard with this recording. After hitting #12 in 1976, they had only one more top twenty, a #16 "Touch Me When We're Dancing" in 1981. They charted a couple of songs from this record, but the result was a colossal disappointment.
It is too bad because in many ways, "Passage" is the Carpenters' most ambitious and creative record of all. They run the gauntlet from commerical to classical to jazz to science fiction, all in the course of only nine songs.
This CD does have the best cover of any Carpenters recording. It disdains the traditional Carpenters logo and is rather colorful in opposition to the covers preceding it. Indeed on this album, everything about the Carpenters has changed. It is the only Carpenters recording to not have ONE SINGLE song written by Richard Carpenter.
The first mistake was nothing short of colossal: Karen Carpenter turned down 'You Light Up My Life' after being offered it as a single by her boyfriend (and later California Lt Governor) Mike Curb. That song went to Debby Boone, who promptly turned it into the #1 song of the entire decade of the 1970s, ten weeks at number one. But the Carpenters had other matters.
The album kicks off with the Michael Franks written "B'wana She No Home." Your guess is as good as mine as to what that phrase means. The top-selling single on the album follows, "All You Get From Love Is A Love Song," written in 1973 by Steve Eaton. It sounds so much like their past stuff that you'd swear Richard and John Bettis wrote it, but they didn't. The song peaked at #37 in the summer of 1977. The next song showed how fortunes could turn on the Carpenters. For years, they had made hit-after-hit releasing lesser known tunes by others like Ruby and the Romantics. Karen did the better read on "I Just Fall In Love Again," but it was Anne Murray two years later who got the #1 hit with it on the country charts. Side one ends with a nine-minute operatic piece from the Andrew Lloyd Weber-Tim Rice opera "Evita." The song is a familiar one - "Don't Cry For Me Argentina," a smash hit but not for Karen.
Side two kicked off with then unknown Juice Newton's "Sweet, Sweet Smile," reminiscent of their shot at "Jambalaya" in 1973 and proof that Karen and Richard could sing country well, too. It was another single but flopped. A better release would have been the next song, "Two Sides," written in 1972 by Scott Davis. Richard called it his personal favorite on the recording, and it sounds eerily similar to some of their later tunes like the "Lovelines" album. "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" is a calypso tune celebrating feminism - proof that while the Carpenters might have been behind on the socialist bandwagon (Evita), they were also out to lunch on the feminist movement that was then flaming out into the disco era. The last song, "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" was probably chosen because 1977 was the year of "Star Wars" and the beginning of the sci-fi craze. Tony Peluso reprised his role from the "Now and Then" recording as 'confused DJ.' He is contacted by aliens and the song launches. It is probably the most creative song on the album, a single, and a lackluster hit.
The age of the Carpenters and the years on the road were now beginning to take their toll. "Passage" stands as a marker of time when the Carpenters passed from the scene. It is enjoyable but not for those who are not familiar already with their obvious talent. I give it three stars.
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