Sharing Horizons That Are New to Us: If I Were a Carpenter Turns 30

Looking back on a seminal, if flawed, tribute album to The Carpenters

September 20, 2024September 20, 2024 Melody Esme 0 Comments 4 Non Blondes, American Music Club, Babes In Toyland, Dishwalla, If I Were A Carpenter, Johnette Napolitano, Karen Carpenter, Marc Moreland, Matthew Sweet, Redd Kross, Richard Carpenter, Sheryl Crow, Shonen Knife, Sonic Youth, The Carpenters

If I Were A Carpenter on cassette (Image: Discogs)

It’s hard to think of a tribute album as central to a band’s reevaluation as 1994’s If I Were a Carpenter.

Of course, the record wasn’t the sole reason the easy-listening brother-sister duo’s early reception now reads as alien. Tragedy has a way of recontextualizing art that initially seemed superficial (don’t think too hard about what that says about us), and Karen Carpenter’s tragic early death certainly gave The Carpenters’ sappy sincerity a sense of depth it seems alluded most critics in the ‘70s.

Beyond that, a certain subsection of the queer community adored (and continues to adore) the duo, especially Karen, culminating in the greatest of all music biopics, Todd Haynes’ 1987 masterpiece Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Shot with Barbie dolls, a way of both downsizing a monumental story into a student film budget and cleverly providing subtext about the horrors of anorexia, the film gives The Carpenters a gravitas and grit that would have seemed unfathomable in their hit-making days. It also infuriated Karen’s family, Richard Carpenter especially, and the lawsuits that followed sealed the film’s fate as a (somewhat) obscure bootleg.

Two years later, Sonic Youth released their first major label album Goo, which contained the song “Tunic (Song for Karen),” Kim Gordon’s tribute to Karen Carpenter. Sonic Youth were the opposite of The Carpenters in many ways — abrasive, cryptic, critically acclaimed, and cool. If anyone’s endorsement of The Carpenters could make a difference, it was theirs, and they sure made their case. “Tunic” is a song of extreme empathy and passion, both portraying the cruel mental anguish of eating disorders (“I feel like I’m disappearing, getting smaller every day/But I look in the mirror and I’m bigger in every way”) and immortalizing — or liberating, as Gordon later put it — Karen as an eternal light, never fading, in heaven with Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin and Dennis Wilson. Putting her in the same category as those three was a bold move that your average rock snobs would scoff at. But to Kim Gordon, Karen Carpenter was as powerful a force, if not more powerful. In an open letter to Karen, Gordon described her as “the sad girl with the extraordinarily beautiful, soulful voice.”

Four years later, Matt Wallace (who’d produced for Faith No More and The Replacements in the ‘80s) and Dave Konjoyan decided to put together a tribute album, with the indie/alternative stars of the day offering their takes on the duo’s work. What resulted is If I Were a Carpenter, a collection of the era’s best and worst weirdo rockers celebrating the work of a group once believed to be as unhip as a musical act could be.

The album starts not with a bang, but with a whimper, as the rootsy indie/slowcore band American Music Club takes on the 1972 track “Goodbye to Love,” the first Richard Carpenter-penned song from the duo to become an actual hit. The original “Goodbye to Love” is a surprisingly radical Carpenters track, beginning as the sort of light piano ballad they were known for before a noisy fuzz guitar solo comes in halfway through, a wild curveball for a band who, two years after their commercial breakthrough, weren’t known for sonic magic tricks.

Choosing American Music Club as the act to open the record was a wise choice, highlighting that, for as soft as people believed The Carpenters were, some of the hippest indie bands of the time were even softer. This cover is actually far lighter than the original (and duller, to be honest). Their take on the guitar solo may use more fuzz — it’s hard to tell, honestly, due to the production — but it doesn’t hit as hard. In 1994, a mellow band suddenly lighting up a song with distorted guitars was no longer unique. In fact, it was an entire genre.

(Did The Carpenters’ “Goodbye to Love” invent shoegaze? Who can say?)

The second track, “Top of the World,” does the opposite, to even more success. Where American Music Club toned down one of The Carpenters’ more ambitious singles, the Japanese alt/punk band Shonen Knife pump up one of the band’s wispier tracks into a noisy, melodic punk jam. The original song is pretty enough — a country-ish soft rock tune with pedal steel and delicate harmonies. The cover, meanwhile, is fast, noisy, and messy. Yet it’s also euphoric, and it arguably captures the joy and optimism of the tune in a way that the subdued original couldn’t. A combination that seems like it could potentially clash actually works to highlight the triumphant lyrics–they’re not just saying they’re on the top of the world, they also sound like it.

Unlike with the opener, I think that Shonen Knife’s take on the song improved upon it, and it seems I’m not alone. The track has certainly has had a little place in popular culture, appearing in the soundtracks to The Parent Trap, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Not bad for a non-single, bound to be overshadowed by the alternative hit “Superstar,” which immediately follows it.

VIDEO: Sonic Youth “Superstar”

Sonic Youth were the most obvious pick for an album of alt-rock Carpenters covers. The original “Superstar” is a clear masterpiece, a gorgeous piece of orchestral pop, and the best use of Karen’s dreamlike voice short of “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” (I’ll get to it soon). It’s already a weird, downright artful little song, which is especially apparent if you listen to Delaney & Bonnie’s awful original.

So rather than try to make the song weirder, Sonic Youth embraces the things about the record that work, and offer about as straightforward a tribute as they can manage. Thurston Moore sings the hell out of it, like protecting its dignity is the most important thing he’s ever done. The band nails the cover largely because of how much they respect the tune, and for this they were rewarded with an #26 hit on the alternative charts. Sonic Youth’s take on “Superstar” is the most iconic track from the album, notably being featured prominently in the 2007 film Juno.

For a while after that, the album settles into what you’d expect — a mixed bag that honors its concept. The Cranberries do a very Cranberries version of “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” neither improving on nor disgracing the original and giving ‘90s alt kids an easy wedding song. The fantastic Dutch band Bettie Serveert turn the mediocre “For All We Know” into a dreamy little indie pop gem, before the terrible post-grunge band Dishwalla ruins one of the most underrated of the duo’s singles, the soulful Carole King-penned “It’s Going to Take Some Time.” It’s the worst track on the album by some measure, removing all the things that make the original great until it sounds like standard mid-’90s wannabe-Pearl Jam slop.

“Solitaire,” never a good song in the first place (as Richard Carpenter himself will tell you), fades into the background, with Sheryl Crow, hot off her middling yet hugely successful debut, failing to save it with an Americana makeover. Concrete Blonde singer/bassist Johnette Napolitano and Wall of Voodoo guitarist Marc Moreland join together for a cute take on “Hurting Each Other” that they enjoyed enough that they started a short-lived band, Pretty & Twisted.

Then come two absolute bangers. First, ‘80s punk rockers turned ‘90s major label alternative band Redd Kross cover “Yesterday Once More.” The original was a lovely ode to the joys of pop music, loaded with “sha-la-la”’s and “shooby doo lang lang”’s — not an original concept, done before by Barry Mann and after by The Police, but convincing enough. It was Richard Carpenter’s favorite song he ever wrote. Redd Kross’ version is even better, capturing the spirit of the song and offering a glimpse at the better side of post-grunge that would be exemplified by Everclear and Local H in the late ‘90s.

VIDEO: Redd Kross “Yesterday Once More”

Covered by Babes in Toyland, “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” is a strange one in every way. Originally recorded by the prog band Klaatu, The Carpenters released a version of the song on their bizarro late-career album Passages, and it’s become their biggest cult record. For some (me included), the song is close to their magnum opus, a mystifying and extraordinary piece of pop-prog. For everyone else, it’s at least a fascinating artifact, and it’s obvious why a band like Babes in Toyland would want to cover it. Their version is the heaviest track on the album, turning a six-and-a-half minute space epic into a four-minute sludgy punk song. It may be the best song both The Carpenters and Babes in Toyland ever recorded (proving that the best way to make prog-rock is to not be a prog-rock musician).

Nothing from there reaches the highs of “Top of the World,” “Superstar,” “Yesterday Once More,” or “Calling Occupants,” but the album closes with grace. Cracker’s cover of “Rainy Days and Mondays” is mostly interesting because of David Lowery’s voice cracking throughout, Matthew Sweet’s “Let Me Be the One” is lovely if forgettable, and 4 Non Blondes do something with “Bless the Beasts and Children” (what they do, I’m still not quite sure after several consecutive listens). Then Grant Lee Buffalo closes with a beautiful and jubilant cover of “We’ve Only Just Begun,” the closest thing The Carpenters have to a standard.

I was born 10 months before the album’s release, and in this very specific context, it feels like I grew up in a world created by it. A world where “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Superstar” are obviously great songs, celebrated in the same magazines that dismissed The Carpenters in the ‘70s. Sometimes, all we need is a bunch of freaks and queer people to convince the snobs that normies can be cool, too.