Carpenters, Voice of the Heart (1983)
I am a Carpenters fan – but that wasn’t always the case, I had to ‘come out’ as such. The tribute album gave me the license – but the songs had always been in my heart. For many years I had a Greatest Hits album on vinyl but in recent times I’ve started picking up the original albums from the catalogue. There’s some gems – including deeper, album cuts. There’s also some gloop, some slop. They were sugary-sweet. That was both blessing and curse. And this, the first of the posthumous albums – built by Richard to honour Karen after her death has the least number of ‘hits’ of any Carpenters album. Which makes sense. It also has some great performances – and some lovely songs. Including Karen’s final recordings. Part of listening to the Carpenters, for many anyway, is thinking about the story that informs those song-selections and performances – that Karen was heartbroken her mother never showed her any love and tired from being bossed around by her parents, any lover and most definitely by her brother. And that Richard was heartbroken that his talent never translated to true star-status. It was all about Karen. And he loved that. And hated it a lot also.

Sample Track: Now
The Vinyl Countdown is a document of every LP I listen to, brand new discoveries and old-old favourites; extremely pre-loved, previously abandoned or with the shrink-wrap having just been removed it’s all here at The Vinyl Countdown