Carpenters: Christmas Portrait

CARPENTERS: CHRISTMAS PORTRAIT (1978)

1) O Come, O Come Emmanuel!; 2) Overture; 3) Christmas Waltz; 4) Sleigh Ride; 5) It's Christmas Time / Sleep Well, Little Children; 6) Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas; 7) Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town; 8) Christmas Song; 9) Silent Night; 10) Jingle Bells; 11) First Snowfall / Let It Snow; 12) Carol Of The Bells; 13) Merry Christ­mas, Darling; 14) I'll Be Home For Christmas; 15) Christ Is Born; 16) Winter Wonderland / Silver Bells / White Christmas; 17) Ave Maria.

If you happen to like your Christmas albums and prefer that the artist respect the source material rather than deconstruct it, reinterpret it, enslave it to his twisted will and sinister purposes, then Christmas Portrait, probably not coincidentally released by Richard and Karen Carpenter on the exact same day as AC/DC's If You Want Blood You've Got It, has a good chance of becoming your favorite Christmas album of all time. They could have expanded upon the cautious experi­mentation of Passage — but given its lackluster chart performance, probably decided that this road was not for them, after all, and decided to apply their musical talents elsewhere. Somehow, they remembered, they hadn't done a Christmas album yet; and since a Christmas album for Carpenters seems as natural as a live album for The Who, or an album about death and decay for The Doors, or an album about merry gay sailors for Elton John, they went ahead with the idea. (Particularly since they'd already written one Christmas song, ʽMerry Christmas Darlingʼ, as early as 1970 — it is also included here, but with a new vocal recorded by Karen).

The specific nature of the duo's approach to Christmas is in the sheer grandness of the project. This is the first Carpenters LP to run over 45 minutes, and the first one to start out with a proper overture — five minutes of orchestral snippets for both performed and unperformed songs. Actu­ally, they recorded enough material for a double album, but wisely decided to hold off, because, you know, people also need some time to eat their turkey. (The rest of it was shelved for six years, only appearing after Karen's death). Even so, what with all the introductions, codas, links and transitions, Christmas Portrait feels more like a coherent «folk mass» of sorts than just a dis­jointed series of Christmas carols, a single lengthy ritual performed conquering-style by Good Christmas Fairy Karen and her loyal band of dwarf and elf henchmen, molded into the shape of a sugary-suave symphonic orchestra.

That said, do not hold high hopes: Richard is a professional and inspired arranger, but his inspi­ration in such matters rarely hovers above Disney levels, and every bit of this music, be it purely instrumental (ʽCarol Of The Bellsʼ, etc.) or vocal-based, is designed for nothing more and nothing less than sentimental family entertainment. Unfortunately, Karen is also helpless to add any extra dimensions in this situation: she is serving here as a conductor of the old-fashioned Christmas spirit and is consciously leaving all of her «dark strains» on the shelf (not that she could be blamed for that — it is awesome when performers try to identify the darker sides of Christmas mate­rial, but expecting non-trivial activities like that from Carpenters is like expecting modesty and humility from The Donald). At least her vocal frequencies and intonations help avoid extra sappiness; but I cannot single out even one song that would strike a particularly vulnerable / sen­sitive string in my own soul. It's all just nice, tolerable Christmas fare.

It is good, however, that most of the songs are short or, if long, actually constitute medleys: this creates a fast-rotating kaleidoscope of sub-moods (giggly, joyful, pensive, solemn, whatever) that, if anything, brings the Christmas ritual to life, so that the whole thing does not come across as too rigid or square. Still, it also pretty much kills off any hopes anybody could have about Passage opening some new stage in the duo's history — and with Karen's rapidly deteriorating condition (not to mention Richard's ongoing addiction to Quaaludes), that history, alas, was already coming to an end.