Carole King: Writer - 1970
This was Carole King's debut solo album, despite her seeming to have been in the music industry for ages. It is a fine one too, most underrated and almost forgotten about in the tsunami wake of Tapestry.
The album kicks off in a surprisingly solid and chunky rock fashion on the excellent Spaceship Races. Maybe it wasn't so surprising - everyone was expected to rock out in 1970, weren't they? Only Joni Mitchell was putting out introspective bedsit albums as yet. Back to this track, at times Carole's light, appealing voice doesn't quite match the strength and power of backing, but it's still a mighty good opener. It features would-be long time King associate Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar on lead guitar and The Kootch lays some good stuff down, too. I read someone says that Carole sounds like Grace Slick here and the track sounds like Jefferson Airplane. I know what they mean.
Probably the album's best-known number is the typically Carole ballad No Easy Way Down, its Stax-y organ and soulful sound putting on in mind of Aretha Franklin's classic material. Carole was one of the best white soul artists around, something she is not often credited for. Up there with Dusty Springfield when she delivers material like this. Child Of Mine is a lovely piano and vocal ballad of the sort you would expect from King.
Goin' Back was, of course, a song previously covered by The Byrds on their 1968 Notorious Byrd Brothers album. King's version here is deliciously rhythmic and melodic, in that archetypally 1970 way. The Byrds' take is as 1968 as King's is 1970. The song has history, though, because Dusty Springfield originally recorded it in 1966, giving it her customary smoky, soulful vocal patina, backed by some strong mid-sixties brass and strings.
To Love is a thoroughly gorgeous serving of soft country rock, something that was also very much around in 1970. What Have You Got To Lose is an upbeat number with hints of Burt Bacharach in there. Carole's voice positively soars on this one. I have to say at this point that the album has a lovely, warm early seventies stereo sound to it. Side two opens with the five minute long Eventually, a more sombre, reflective ballad that, while a mature composition, is maybe just a little downbeat. That is splitting hairs, though.
Raspberry Jam is a serving of hippiness, sort of CSN meeting early Carly Simon and The 5th Dimension for some blissed-out summery fun. Love that guitar and organ break in the middle and it even goes a bit Rick Wakeman at the end. The song is just so beautifully bright and breezy. You almost taste that jam too. Can't You Be Real is a pleasant but otherwise unremarkable ballad, but the lyrically cynical I Can't Hear You No More has a vibrant funkiness to it. Solid country rock returns on the Southern-sounding fare of Sweet Sweetheart before we get a closing cover of The Drifters' Up On The Roof, a song written by Carole with Gerry Goffin, of course. Here she slows it down beautifully to almost walking pace and shows us just what a great song it is and what a phenomenal writer of pop songs she was.
Rolling Stone's Jon Landau wrote of the album at the time -
"Writer was a blessing despite its faults and that though the production was poor, King herself makes the album very worthwhile."
He is right in many respects, although I have to disagree about the production. It carries an attractive warmth, for me. This is the sort of album it would once have been possible to pick up on a dull rainy Saturday afternoon in a record store's discount box and take it home to immediately brighten your day.
I'm surprised Carole ok'd the rear cover image, though....there surely were more flattering ones around!
