Everybody knows Karen Carpenter’s got the best damn shoulders in rock, so when injury comes to these angular delights it’s cause for alarm, and alarmed I was when I picked up a copy of UFO Report and saw burbled all over the cover: MUTILATED COW CORPSE MYSTERIOUSLY LANDS ON KAREN CARPENTER DURING FAMILY PICNIC--and in lower case letters: Recording star suffers damage to shoulders. A gasp and a sigh, the strangest thoughts began surfing through my brain. Was this the long awaited reply from that interstellar craft quietly orbiting the dark side of the moon? Was it some sort of cruel alien criticism perpetrated by some idiot three-eyed bowl of intelligent jello? After all, we know they’ve been monitoring our airwaves since the Fifties, so wouldn’t a response to the Carpenters’ latest musical effort be in order? Especially since Passages has to be one of the most rabid examples of weird since Yoko Ono stole her act from Yma Sumac, a lady so obviously otherworldly she goes beyond modern cultural understanding.
On Passages, Karen and Richard (who only produces on this one), sibling strangeloves to the last, concoct cavatines of cosmic code more effective no doubt (if indeed they are being monitored by shapeless aliens) than the recording of Chuck Berry the U.S. Government slopped into a satellite and sent on its merry way into the outskirts of the Crab Nebulae.
Billed as a radical departure for the infamously wimpy Carpenters, this album contains two of the most candescent displays of “off-the-walldom” this listener has ever heard. These two songs are so strange it took me three weeks to get up the gumption to even play ’em. It was with a scintilla of apprehension that I waded into the Carpenters’ version of the Klaatu song, “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.” Hearing this combination of song and singers was like hearing Peter Frampton doing “Ork Alarm” by Magma. Really, this song really burrados my niktoe and sturns my gort.
If you listen closely, you’ll notice that Karen and Richard play the parts of the inquisitive aliens, hinting at the true nature of their origin. Look, if Bowie can fall to the earth and try to make passage home by selling inventions, why not send some advanced scouts in the perfect guise of harmless, well liked, pop musicians? Think about it; the plot potentials here are staggering. So everyone thinks the Carpenters are wimpoids, but could it just be they’re spewing forth a kind of sonic saltpeter that’s slowly working its way into the electronic brain flow of Earth’s citizenry?
As far as “On the Balcony of the Casa Rosada/Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” which should’ve been the flip side to the single of “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft,” what can you say? Fer crissakes, it starts out in some sort of language which they’d like you to think was Spanish or whatever but could just as easily be Kobaian or even some sort of alien code for “Okay boys, get your tentacles shined and make that grand entrance” segueing into Karen playing the role of Evita Perón. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. This song cuts Mel Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler” for the simple fact that it’s serious.
The rest of the album is a hodgepodge of typical Carpenters outings with Michael Franks’ “B’wana She No Home” standing out. I don’t know, maybe it was justified for those aliens to dump that cow on Karen’s shoulders, maybe it’ll knock some sense into her and make her realize that the best move she could ever make is to play drums wearing a dress. I like this album. I like the Carpenters. Why? ’Cause I’m smart enough to know if you butter up the invading armies, maybe you’ll get a good job--like swabbing up the alien latrines or hauling out alien garbage or maybe even...well, never mind, just get wise and keep looking over that shoulder ’cause some day the guy or gal next to you might be a clone of Karen or Richard waiting to shove a mind control cattle prod into your neck--maybe that’s why everybody’s cutting their hair and...
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