When I was growing up in the South, in the late 1970s, there was no such thing as postmodern irony. Pop culture was held close in a hungry embrace, not at arm's length. Kiss, disco and the Carpenters were the embodiment of both fantasy and reality. When Karen Carpenter sang, "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down," I turned up the volume out of identification, not bemused detachment.

Karen Carpenter was the album meant to signal the singer's coming out as a woman and a solo artist, an attempt to humanize the winsome icon she had become with the Carpenters. It didn't work out that way. Recorded in 1979, four years before her death, Karen Carpenter was reportedly shelved at her behest so that it would not detract from upcoming Carpenters projects. There's no small disappointment, then, in the fact that the record's producer, Phil Ramone, smothered the singer in the studio just as much as her brother, Richard, did; both men cloaked Karen's sublime voice in overcooked musical trappings. Where Richard Carpenter was given to a production style both pedestrian and saccharine, Ramone imitated whatever was hot at the moment.

That means Karen Carpenter is an often-embarrassing time capsule of its era. There are stabs at generic disco ("Lovelines," "My Body Keeps Changing My Mind"), Cars-style New Wave ("Still in Love With You") and breezy pop a la Olivia Newton-John ("Guess I Just Lost My Head"). There are also moments that remind you of how extraordinary Carpenter's crystalline voice could be. "All Because of You" and "Make Believe It's Your First Time" start off with simple accompaniment – just a guitar or piano behind Carpenter's exquisite singing – before going into kitchen-sink overload. There is such a potent sense of longing in the conjoined sadness and joy in her vocals that Carpenter transcends even the most cloying production. You can hear, too, why Karen Carpenter connected so soulfully with her original audience long before hipsters, up to their necks in smarm, decided it would be a hoot to make her an alt-rock goddess. (RS 746)

ERNEST HARDY