In may 1970, the month that students protesting Richard Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia were killed at Kent State, in Ohio, the Carpenters released Close to You, the album that established them as AM radio staples for much of the '70s. Four years later, while he was in the midst of the Watergate cover-up, Nixon invited them to perform at the White House, calling the fresh-faced performers "young America at its best." For a generation weaned on the cynicism of the Vietnam War and Watergate, the Carpenters provided the ironic soundtrack to its primal memories. So it's strangely fitting that in a year that saw the deaths of Nixon, the creepy, compelling father of that dysfunctional generation, and of Kurt Cobain, its most notable casualty, a group of alternative musicians should put together If I Were a Carpenter, an affectionate, almost reverent tribute to the Carpenters.

The Carpenters conjure a yearning for a Brady Bunch childhood we never had. But this nostalgic desire is coupled with the awareness that completely happy families are as illusory as the Carpenters' carefully manufactured squeaky-clean image. Just as Mr. Brady died of AIDS, Karen Carpenter succumbed to anorexia nervosa, another disease unknown in the early '70s.

Todd Haynes' brilliant 1987 film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which uses Barbie dolls to tell its feminist horror story about the vocalist, who was also one of pop history's few female drummers, calls anorexia "a fascism over the body." The film – which helped renew appreciation for the Carpenters but was banned when Richard Carpenter (angered over allusions to his "private life") sued the filmmaker for copyright infringement – demonstrates that the oppressiveness of her family (and society at large) manifested itself in her illness.

Karen Carpenter's loneliness, disconnectedness and self-destructiveness resonate now more than ever. In "Goodbye to Love" (given a melancholy treatment by American Music Club), she sings, "No one ever cared if I should live or die/Time and time again, the chance for love has passed me by." The inexplicable ennui of "Rainy Days and Mondays" (Cracker without a hint of their usual snideness) mirrors the Zeitgeist of the '90s: "Nothing is really wrong/Feeling like I don't belong."

The Carpenters' masterpiece – and the tribute's standout track – is "Superstar," the haunting portrayal of a fan's unrequited love for a pop star. "Your guitar/It sounds so sweet and clear/But you're not really here/It's just the radio," Karen sings with a longing that makes this media-filtered romance sound that much more disaffected. On their eerie rendition, Sonic Youth take the estrangement a step further with distorted feedback, synth effects and disembodied vocals that sound like a radio transmission from a distant alien world trying desperately to make contact.

Karen's extraordinary contralto, which could communicate wrenching emotional nakedness with impeccable clarity and purity, is probably the main source of the Carpenters' mystique. And the conspicuous absence of her voice on the tribute album's songs eloquently expresses the tragedy of her loss. But while her voice is missed, many cuts on the tribute owe so much to the originals that they vindicate Richard's undervalued arranging skills.

Grant Lee Buffalo's "We've Only Just Begun" is almost a note-for-note re-creation of the Carpenters' version, and Richard sits in at the piano on Matthew Sweet's affecting "Let Me Be the One." Ironically, the campiest cuts sound least like the originals: Shonen Knife's pretty-in-punk rendering of "Top of the World"; Babes in Toyland's stripped-down take of the Klaatu cover "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft"; 4 Non Blondes' shriekfest "Bless the Beasts and the Children," which proves they didn't learn much about subtlety from Karen.

For those who dismiss the notion of a Carpenters revival as some kind of joke – hey, if Nixon received re-evaluation, why not the Carpenters? – the fact that this tribute album mostly plays it straight will come as a surprise. But for the more open-minded, listening to If I Were a Carpenter and going back to The Originals movingly evokes an era we've only just begun to come to terms with. (RS 693)

AT WEISEL