Richard Carpenter is amazing. He took a scratch vocal of Karen trying out "Tryin' To Get The Feeling Again" and managed to get a totally finished record out of it (did the same earlier on "Now"). And work much other magic in this lush collection, beautifully mastered and sequenced. Richard at this point has remastered virtually every important Carpenters recording (listen to the original version of "Close To You"...it has almost nothing to do with the current version)...the Carpenters is the only act I can think of whose music keeps evolving over new releases with no new music actually being recorded. If you haven't by now been convinced Karen is one of the greatest pop voices of all time and Richard one of the great producers, this one will win you over.

A lot of casual fans feel this album was an erstaz collection of hits, wrong. The point of this album was to pull the covers together. This is the second version, and better mastered, of this release. The first version of "Interpretations" was released with more tracks and longer liner notes in October of 1994 in England and Canada. "Without A Song" is an edited version, the original features Perry Como, John Davidson, and Ella Fitzgerald taking over the leads after the Carpenters overdubbed intro. Oddly enough, Karen and Richard recorded a version for themselves with their singing all the parts. This long version is available on "As Time Goes By."

The treasure here is "Trying To Get The Feeling Again." This is Karen at her rawest. Her vocal lead is allowed to "dry" giving her an edge not associated with her smooth sound. She could "sight read," the turning of the lyric sheet is a strong indicatior of this. Listing to this track almost makes you feel like you're at the recording session or better, listening to a demo as a friend would, the artist later asking fo an opinion or input on the track before it's finished. How intimate is that?

"From This Moment On" is Karen recorded on a mono audio track, Richard would later re-record his concert grand in stereo. This song is from the soundtrack to the 1980 television special "Music, Music, Music." Prior to this version, the song was performed live on "The Tonight Show" and various concerts.

The import version of "Interpretations" contain remixed album tracks and two ballads from "Lovelines." "Sing," "Desperado," and "Please Mr. Postman" are among the remixes, "You're The One," and "Where Do I Go From Here" are the two ballads from "Lovelines." Interesting to note that while this album was a collection of covers, two excellent tracks, "Baby It's You" and "I Just Fall In Love Again" weren't used. A lot of people feel, that despite Richard's comments in the liner notes abount the late discovery of "Trying To Get The Feeling Again," that this album was created to make that song a centerpiece and to "spoon feed" his audience with unreleased recordings. Whatever the reason, the theme of this album is indeed their cover work, which stands to honor the songwriters by their words being given such a beautiful voice.

This album features only three unreleased songs, but they are worth the album. "Without a Song" is beautifully sung a capella, "From This Moment On" is a classical masterpiece, and "Trying to Get the Feeling Again" is one of the Carpenters best works. The song should have been released on HORIZON, as it would have been a major hit. Overall, the rest of the album is repetitive, but the group's unreleased material makes the album worth the buy.

Many of these songs have been released in countless "Hits" collections. The stand-out is "Trying to Get the Feeling Again." The tragic interpretation makes Barry Manilow's version seem like "Hey, Hey, It's the Monkeys." Karen really nails the depression behind falling out of love and Richard supports the emotions with a superb arrangement of tragic, frantic strings.

This is a nice album, although it is somewhat of a disappointment. Agreed, this is not a "greatest hits" album, but there should have been more consideration to include more of the duo's known songs. Why are songs mentioned in theliner notes ("Yesterday Once More" and "Top Of The World") not included in this collection? New fans may not understand. On an upper note all recordings on this album are remastered, whcih makes for better vocal clarity and sound quality. The booklet included, giving insights to the recordings, is a very nice touch.