Carpenters: Made In America

CARPENTERS: MADE IN AMERICA (1981)

1) Those Good Old Dreams; 2) Strength Of A Woman; 3) (Want You) Back In My Life Again; 4) When You've Got What It Takes; 5) Somebody's Been Lyin'; 6) I Believe You; 7) Touch Me When We're Dancing; 8) When It's Gone (It's Just Gone); 9) Beechwood 4-5789; 10) Because We Are In Love.

There is not much that can be said, at least meaningfully, about the last Carpenters album re­leased in Karen's lifetime. Apparently, already after her death Richard went on the Larry King show and declared that this was both his and her favorite record of everything they'd done — a statement that I can only ascribe to a particular sentimental value that he'd placed on it, as well as the recording sessions still being fresh in his memory. Because even if Christmas Portrait could be written off as a one-time special project, Made In America clearly showed that the slightly experimental and unpredictable direction they took on Passage had been abandoned for good, and now, at the start of a new musical decade which they were not to survive, they'd slipped back to the level of Horizon and A Kind Of Hush — something that was even less forgivable for the early Eighties than it was for the mid-Seventies.

All the hallmarks are right here. There is very little original songwriting (only the opening and the closing songs are credited to Richard and Bettis). There's one Roger Nichols cover and one Burt Bacharach cover, and they are both boring. There is one obligatory lively cover of a Motown oldie — this time it is ʽBeachwood 4-5789ʼ from The Marvelettes backlog — and it is as fun and as forgettable as ever. And then there's a lot of help from outside professional songwriters and some covers of recent hits, mainly from the easy listening circuit, with nothing even remotely approaching the «edge» of ʽB'wana She No Homeʼ or ʽCalling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craftʼ. Made in America, for sure, but not necessarily something of which the American nation should be particularly proud.

Surprisingly, I have several times encountered the word «comeback» in conjunction with this re­cord — which, honestly, I can only understand in the most straightforward sense, namely, that this was the first album of «original» material they managed to get out in four years. But as in «artistic comeback»? Hardly. Yes, they managed to score one significant hit with ʽTouch Me When We're Dancingʼ, a cover of an earlier (and lesser) 1979 hit by the short-lived Muscle Shoals session band Bama, but it is just a sappy para-disco ballad, rendered in a style that was never well associable with Karen Carpenter and, for that matter, not improving one bit on the original. And yes, the opening lyrical country-pop flow of ʽThose Good Old Dreamsʼ is seductive enough, but I could not say the same for the closing ʽBecause We Are In Loveʼ, a corny wedding song consisting of nothing but well-harmonized rose petals. Nor, in fact, could I say it about any other song on this album.

Putting it in context — the fairly wretched life of Richard, suffering from his addictions, and Karen, suffering from her anorexia — only makes things worse, because it seems as if they spe­cially designed Made In America so that it could take them as far away from their problems as possible. Basically, this is the happiest-sounding Carpenters album ever (the single exception being Randy Handley's slightly deeper, but not very memorable ballad ʽWhen It's Goneʼ), full of shallow statements of romance and devotion, nothing even remotely reminding you of the psycho­logical depths these guys were once capable of reaching with songs like ʽSuperstarʼ or, heck, even ʽRainy Days And Mondaysʼ. And perhaps it is an understandable gesture, to create a joyful panorama of musical optimism in order to conceal all the pain, but the fact of the matter is, the Carpenters were always better at sadness than they were at happiness; and I would take their grimly stoned facial expressions on Horizon any day over the plastic smiles and happily patriotic expressions of the Made In America painting.

In the end, this is not the kind of thumbs down that could somehow be retracted because the singer died an awful death two years later — the album does everything in its power to assure us that "we've only just begun" once again (ʽBecause We Are In Loveʼ was played at Karen's wed­ding, one that ended in embarrassment and disaster one year later), but does it far less efficiently and believably than, say, John Lennon's Double Fantasy. In mild defense, neither Karen's voice nor Richard's arranging skills have deteriorated one bit, so the record is still recommendable to all those who are always ready to take the duo at face value.