Torch

Carly Simon | Format: MP3 Download

Product Details

• Original Release Date: November 30, 1980
• Label: Warner Catalog and O/H
• Copyright: 1981 Warner Brothers Records
• Genres: Pop/Adult Contemporary, Pop/Pop Rock, Pop/Singer-Songwriters, Pop/Soft Rock, Rock/Singer-Songwriters
• ASIN: B00123D4JS
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Torch at its Slit-Your-Wrists Best, February 24, 2004

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Torch (Audio CD)

At first glance Carly Simon would seem an unlikely talent for a collection of 20th Century pop classics--her unique vocals, that mix the quality of speech with music, would seem at odds with the strictness of the material. But instead of approaching the music with the full orchestrations of Bette Midler or Linda Ronstadt, she offers a stripped down interpretation, and the resulting music has the feel of a smoky, almost-empty nightclub, where the singer sits on a stool surrounded by a bare-bones band and sings not for you, but very powerfully for herself.

1981's TORCH is an incredible recording. Opening with "Blue on Blue" and continuing through such classics as "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good," "Body and Soul," and "Hurt," Simon demonstrates a range of emotion that transcends her more typical off-the-cuff sound, a combination of fire and ice that recalls the great jazz singers of the 1940s and 1950s but which somehow never sounds less than absolutely contemporary. This is classic torch at its slit-your-wrists best, a bonfire of dying emotions.

It is impossible to select a favorite from the material Simon offers on this recording, but if I were pressed, I would likely pick the closing "Not a Day Goes By"--curiously, the only greatly then-contemporary piece in the collection, written by Broadway's Stephen Sondheim for the play MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. Again, Simon and Sondheim are not a combination that you would think would work... but with this recording Simon makes it her own, and it is difficult to imagine any other singer who could best her. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Feeling Blue??, Tread VERY Carefully!, July 13, 2005

By 

KRA (East End of LI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Torch (Audio CD)

Carly Simon released this tour de force as she was going through her public divorce with James Taylor. Needless to say things were not going her way at this time, and if you can not feel the pain in her soul from the recordings on this album, you have no emotion!

I remember first listening to this on vinyl back in the late 70's when it was first released, on a snowy night, alone at the then very deserted off season Jersey Shore. If I could get through a listen under those conditions, anyone can.

Her gut renching read of "Body and Soul", "I Got It Bad", "Hurt" and others give early Blueswomen (Lady Day, Ethel Waters and the like) a run for their money.

The mosy haunting track to me is "What Shall You Do", that song had me yearning to call child protective agencies.

This album is that haunting.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ahead of its time, July 24, 2005

By 

Nicholas Bates "Niccho" (Syndey, NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Torch (Audio CD)

The closing song on Torch is Sondheim's Not A Day Goes By - at the time a relatively new song which, in some ways, puts pay to the notion of Torch as an album of 'standards'. When it was released, Torch was something quite new - an album which mined the past (and the present) for the passion and heartache Simon was clearly experiencing as she recorded the songs here, but which was orchestrated with elegant modernity. This modernity is perfectly expressed in Hoagy Carmichael's I Get Along Without You Very Well which is underlined by the use of a sythesizer adding a suitable sense of the sombre. Simon sings the song straight and without theatrics but with plenty of passion. Torch is a more than suitable tittle for this album - Simon has never sung with as much passion or fluidity and she seems to be able to do anything she wants with her voice, none of those off key moments that have crept into her latter day singing. Its easy to imagine her in the studio giving it her all and then some. Perhaps Simon's phrasing is not as masterful as on the later album, My Romance, but that is a tame and almost too tasteful outing by comparion with Torch.