The Vinyl Collection

• Track Listing

With all the vinyl collections coming out in recent years, Carpenters fans have been wondering: why there is "a kind of hush" as far as a comprehensive Carpenters vinyl box? Well, patience is a virtue, friends, and now it's here: the ultimate vinyl Carpenters collection featuring the studio albums plus the duo's original singles anthology, all presented on 180-gram heavyweight vinyl! It comes in a soft-touch box (to go with all the quintessential soft-rock classics therein) with embossing on the front; inside you get their 1973 "best-of" ("The Singles: 1969-1973") plus all the 1969-85 LPs you see below. Those begin with their debut LP "Ticket to Ride," which introduced Karen's heavenly voice and her brother Richard's exquisite arrangements, and end with "Voice of the Heart," the 1983 release compiled by Richard that collected unissued masters for a planned solo album by Karen, and "Lovelines," their 1985 collection of rare and unreleased recordings. In between come the albums that launched Karen and Richard to fame and kept them there, including scores of hauntingly beautiful and quite diverse album tracks as well as their indelible hits "(They Long to Be) Close to You," "We've Only Just Begun," "For All We Know," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "Superstar," "Hurting Each Other," "It's Going to Take Some Time," "Goodbye to Love," "Sing," "Yesterday Once More," "Top of the World," "I Won't Last a Day Without You," "Please Mr. Postman," "Only Yesterday," "Solitaire," "There's a Kind of Hush," "Touch Me When We're Dancing" and more. There'll never be another Carpenters, but finally we have the vinyl box their fans have been wanting all these years. A&M.