The Carpenters - Near Acappella (1969-1975)

I'm doing something here that's extremely uncool. To be honest, I don't really like the Carpenters... but I do think that Karen Carpenter had one of the greatest voices of all time. And I'm hardly the only one to think that. I just looked up her Wikipedia entry, and it quotes Paul McCartney as saying that she had "the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and distinctive."

The problem for me has been the Muzak-y song selection and production. But some of the group's songs were good or even classics, despite the fact they were cheesy. As for the production, recently I've been looking for multitrack versions of songs for some artists. I've been hoping to find that for the Carpenters in order to try to de-Muzak-ify the syrupy as best I could. The bad news is I couldn't find such multitracks for the group, but the good news is that someone else had them and already did what I wanted to do, stripping the songs down to their core of just Karen Carpenters' voice, plus bass and drums. There are some additional instruments and/or vocals here and there, but not much. 

In my opinion, listening to these songs in this way is a real revelation. By removing all the overproduced gunk, you can hear just how great her voice is. She doesn't do vocal gymnastics like TV talent show winners do (thankfully), but there's something about the sound of her voice that demands one's attention. Thanks to Jeremy Doe for making these stripped down versions. I'm calling this album "Near Acappella" because that's the term he used.

If you listen to this, I promise I won't tell anybody! ;)

01 Ticket to Ride (Carpenters)
02 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Carpenters)
03 We've Only Just Begun (Carpenters)
04 For All We Know (Carpenters)
05 Rainy Days and Mondays (Carpenters)
06 Superstar [Groupie] (Carpenters)
07 Goodbye to Love (Carpenters)
08 Hurting Each Other (Carpenters)
09 It's Going to Take Some Time (Carpenters)
10 Sing (Carpenters)
11 This Masquerade (Carpenters)
12 Top of the World (Carpenters)
13 Yesterday Once More (Carpenters)
14 Please Mr. Postman (Carpenters)
15 Only Yesterday (Carpenters)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15281111/Carpent_1969-1975_NearAcapplla_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I chose a picture that shows the bass and drums, since these versions feature those instruments so prominently. Interestingly, Karen Carpenter was a really good drummer, and she's the one playing the drums in this picture.