Carly Simon - Anticipation

Solid second album

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1T6QQEIY0GB1O My name is Jeremy Gloff. I am a musician (check me out on Amazon!) and retro music enthusiast. If you enjoyed this review make sure to check out my Amazon user profile to check out my other reviews. I am always up for making new friends and discussing the music I love!!! August 15, 2008

Still Getting It

My Carly Simon kick was withering away when I stumbled upon this gem at a used store for only $6. I love "Anticipation" and "Legend In Your Own Time" - the singles from this album. I think they are brilliant - presented in an acoustic style with the guitars and rad drums in the foreground. I had read that Carly went to London to record this, her second album, with a live band and put it together exactly as she had envisioned it. So I thought I'd really get into it.

Slowly, but surely I'm making my way through this. Carly has always kind of confused me, I'm either not as poetic or as educated as Miss S, or she is just in her own world - I love the two singles, then I love "The Girl You Think You See" but in the song I can't figure out if she's being sarcastic declaring she can be whatever or anybody her lover wants her to be just "to please you," but does she really mean it or is she just saying that to show what a moron you are not to love what you have in front of you?

She's shock full of contradictions I think, but that makes it all the more appealing, if what you are listening to are different aspects of her life, is it wrong for her to have a moment of vulnerability and compromise to her? I mean who hasn't offered to change for someone?

Also on the album is an opus of a ditty called "Share The End" about a group of people getting together to celebrate the end of the world - I love the concept and the lyrics. Anticipation, like a lot of Carly's albums is made up of mostly acoustic ballads songs of self awareness and love, but with her very sincere delivery and the "live" feel of the whole album I think with repeated listens I'll end up really loving it. But I'll keep you posted, I'm sure you're on the edge of your barcelounger.... June 26, 2008

A pure classic......

....a joyous trip back in time. This is the album where Carly hit her stride, and had her first BIG HIT. Carly the folk singer was in her vocal prime, and the effect was magic. Her lyrics were personal right from the first cut on her first album, but her major personal problems were still in the future. She's always given us family snapshots, and this is no exception; "Julie Thru The Glass" is her newborn niece. Of course, Carly can bite; witness "Legend In Your Own Time".

My generation's love affair with Carly has been going for more than 35 years, and is still alive, thank you. This is, to me, the first of her sexy album jackets. For those like me who are old enough to remember, that long, see-thru, skirt is 70's to the max. Bare feet would have made the look even better, but...For years now, we have looked forward to each new Carly record with "Anticipation"; listen to this, and find out why.

See, I got thru a whole two paragraphs about "Anticipation" without mentioning ketchup..... August 15, 2007

"ANTICIPATION": CARLY SIMON'S QUIET STORM

Carly Simon's second album, "Anticipation" was released in the same year as her phenomenal debut, "Carly Simon", and helped win her the Grammy Award for Best New Artist of that year, 1971. I was ten years old at the time and quite oblivious of her, but not for long...

By the time I was twelve, in 1973, I was already hooked on her "No Secrets" album when one Sunday evening my family was at the home of some family friends and in the 8-track player was a various-artists-hits-sort-of-thing and then suddenly there was THAT VOICE! A-ha! She had other things of which I had not been aware and the love affair was really on! So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen...

"Anticipation" is a quiet storm. It has rock-and-roll punch and pop verve subtley mixed into its folkiness. It's basically stripped-down power comes from the intimacy shared between Carly and a few core fellow musicians who had been touring as her band in 1971. There are no "studio musicians" in sight (or hearing!). Her "songs of the road", as it were, lend themselves well to this intimacy. It can't help but be that the listener feels that intimacy and the unpretentious power of her songs...

"Anticipation" - the title smash and perennial favorite
"Legend In Your Own Time" - another hit and just a really great song about the lonliness and emptiness of fame
"Our First Day Together" - a haunting song of two people on separate wavelengths
"The Girl You Think You See" - Carly at her not-so-coy, sexy best!
"Summer's Coming Around Again" - airy and bright, light jazzy summer song
"Share The End" - apocalyptic and, yes, somewhat frightening
"The Garden" - bucolic rebirth of love, nice juxtoposition with previous track
"Three Days" - song of longing for a fellow musician taken to different parts of the world
"Julie Through The Glass" - sweet little song for the birth of a new baby
"I've Got To Have You" - Carly's take on Kris Kristofferson 's song of raw emotion and sexual desire

Carly Simon's second album, "Anticipation", gathers its strength from its firmly being rooted in acoustic simplicity (which still sounds fresh and untrendy and) which allows an uncluttered effect with which to showcase a set of expertly crafted songs.

December 8, 2006

TALENT CRYSTALLIZED INTO THUNDERING CINEMA

Between Les McCann, Weather Report, Yes and Spirit's 12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus, it was a strange favorite amongst the bunch in 1972. Carly had grabbed ears a year earlier on AM radio with "That's the Way I ALways Heard It Should Be" with her self-titled debut, but the album was all over the place, an imperfect mixture of East Coast folk and oddball country. But someone focused her many talents by the next year when "Anticipation" arrived with its shiny cover and odd dozen batch of beguiling songs, and not a dud amongst them. The production was even more stelllar than the first album, and the whole thing seemed infused with a cinematic grandness (and not grandiosity) that made the whole things SOUND and FEEL bigger than life.

Even the hard rock kids wanted to hear it.

People have described the songs better before me, but the hit title tune has regrettably been spoiled by that ketchup commercial in years past. Nevermind. The sun-dappled and shimmering "Summer's Coming Round Again" is worth the price of the CD itself, and little else in the folk-country canon has been more EROTIC than "(If I Have Known You Only) Three Days." Feeling ennui and lacking that zest for life? Spin "(Come into) The Garden" and be transported to Nirvana instantly.

Last but not least was the maturing fledgling's cover version of Kris Kristofferson's "I've Got to Have You." Ooooooooooh! This is still a scorcher! Carly comes off as the 50 Foot Woman in the best way imaginable, and the production gives voice to sexuality and angst rarely heard in folk or country.

If any album from this period so effectively captured a dance with the Passions, it was "Anticipation", and time has not spoiled its great power as a pop accomplishment.

And this is where we parted ways, but I will always say Thank You. November 22, 2000

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