The City, “Snow Queen”

by Alexandra Molotkow

This is the first track from Now That Everything’s Been Said by the City, the band Carole King formed after she’d split from Gerry Goffin and retreated from songwriting, a few years before she released Tapestry and became the Carole King I was born loving. (That love was confirmed with Really Rosie which OH HEY LOOK a whole drawer full of uncategorizable memories including Stephen King’s Rose Madder and that “join the caravan” song that’s been scraping against my brain for 25 years).

The album sold poorly and it’s tough to find. In about a decade I’ve seen it twice: once in a $4 bin, hacked to bits, once for $30 at my favorite Toronto record store, which still seems to have it in stock, but I’m no longer in Toronto. So I’m very glad to hear that Light in the Attic will be reissuing it on October 2.

Now That Everything’s Been Said is an inconsistent album, but I don’t know if that matters: its best songs are some of my favorites, and its overall feel is so young and unguarded and lush. (“Imperfect but passionate” as the press release puts it.) Tapestry, while a better record, is more muted, although it still has that unselfconscious vulnerability, and curiosity and sense of wonder I associate especially with female singer-songwriters from the 1970s.

Tapestry is an album for home — and my greatest wish is for an apartment that is just Tapestry — but Now That Everything’s Been Said is for being out in the world. I remember listening to it the summer I graduated from high school, on my way to vote for the first time, on my first trip to New York. Times I felt so excited I never thought to feel embarrassed.