Carole King – Tapestry – Yesteryear Vinyl
Tapestry is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Carole King. It was released in 1971 on Ode Records and produced by Lou Adler. It is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with over 25 million copies sold worldwide to date. The album reached 4 in the UK Album Charts going 2xPlatinum and 1 in the USA Billboard top LP’s chart going Diamond. The album received four grammy awards in 1972 for; Album of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Record of the Year (“It’s Too Late”), and Song of the Year (“You’ve Got a Friend”).
The album was recorded at A&M Recording Studios, Studio B, Hollywood, California, and pressed at Columbia Records Pressing Plant, Pitman, NJ.
This 135 gram rock album is the original 1971 release by Ode Records ODE SP-77009.
Tracks:
Side A:
- I Feel The Earth Move
- So Far Away
- It’s Too Late
- Home Again
- Beautiful
- Way Over Yonder
Side B:
- You’ve Got A Friend
- Where You Lead
- Will You Love Me Tomorrow
- Smackwater Jack
- Tapestry
- (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
From my wife’s collection this album had received many, many plays, but after a quick clean with my Nitty Gritty vacuum cleaner looked like new. I find it quite remarkable how many of these yesteryear albums are perfectly flat and concentric, in contrast to some of my audiophile albums of today.
The vinyl noise rated very poor at 4- with considerable pops and clicks on both sides, all I believe as a result of the very significant number of times my wife played this album as a teenager.
I need to preface this review with a reminder that some of what I heard maybe as a direct result of the vinyl being badly worn. There was a severe lack of top end detail and was generally flat, but revealed no audible tracing or tracking distortion.
This album is all about Carole’s vocals, not the musicianship and definitely not the album sonics. Her vocals are front dead center, having no apparent reverb, making them very dry and putting her right in front of you. They sounded just a little hard on occasions but I will put that down to years of wear and tear. Nor is there any significant reverb added to any of the other instruments producing a dry mix that is reminiscent of a recording in an acoustically dead pop studio. Unfortunately, to my ears, this creates a lifeless mix which is compounded by the generally restricted dynamics. Overall the sound was lacking in any significant top end detail, brightness or clarity making the musical backing generally lifeless.
The kit took back seat for most of the time only occasionally giving a center stage performance where it came to life. The kick drum was tight but lacked any punch and slam except on tracks S1T3, S2T3 and S2T4 where the whole kit took center stage for a while together with the electric bass. Which, while tight and clean, was generally well back in the mix leaving all the driving work to Caroles voice and the guitars and pianos. The acoustic bass that popped up a couple of times generally sounded thick and boomy providing poor sonics.
The rest of the kit, snare with rim shots, hi-hat, cymbals and toms only become really apparent on a limited number of tracks, being either not in the mix, or sat well back in others. Congas sounded natural, providing a few short breaks, but again where well set back in the mix.
Electric guitars and pianos were the most prominent instruments. They both sounded open and clean with the pianos providing some reasonable dynamics and solos on tracks like S2T3 and S2T6. The sax had a natural clean and open sound providing backings and solos that were generally set well back except on track S1T6 where the sax took a lead solo.
This album is about Carole’s vocals and her upfront dry mix provides reasonable dynamics with plenty of presence. Instrumentally it lacked sparkle, presence and dynamics and its bottom end wasn’t what you would call stellar by any standards. Even my Hana SL had difficulty in holding a solid instrumental stereo image which alas had very little depth.
While the album was musically enjoyable, my version’s sonics, both vocally and especially instrumentally, are not even close to audiophile by todays standards.
I have to assume it is Carole’s vocals and lyrics of the day that made it, and continue to make it, such an amazing selling album. Maybe an unplayed version of this album would fix some of my concerns.
MoFi have re-released a limited edition, re-mastered version of this album, in both vinyl and plastic (SACD) from the original analog master tapes.
Checkout Discogs for all your used and sometimes new golden oldies, vinyl and more.
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