CONCERT REPORTS: Sydney, Australia, November 8 & 9, 2010

[sturgess66]

Ohhhhhhhhhhh - a nice video from the 11/9/10 show -

Uploaded by "Kennsysmith" - Thanks!!

"Hallelujah" - no one sings this song like Leonard Cohen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl1hPOnK6d0

[sturgess66]

And it seems Kevin Bacon was in the audience - enjoying Leonard's show -

"Kevin Bacon sighting at Leonard Cohen Sydney, Australia 09/11/10"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH0wgTUbaT8

[Evie B]

Thanks Kennsysmith, Leonard's in great voice and he looks really well. Must be that lovely Aussie sun shining on him, it would make anyone feel good. That's a particularly great performance of his masterpiece.

Also thanks Adam1 for A Singer Must Die, great to hear this again.

Evie B

[Cheshire gal]

Thank you kennysmith for this great video. This is Leonard's song and he has never sung it better....

[lcfan2]

Many people can sing Hallelujah but lc always owned it (though I do like the version by Rufus and Martha Wainwright).

However, I thought Nick Cave grabbed "I'm Your Man" by the proverbials and took it for his own in a wonderfully sleazy performance.
I was fortunate to be at Acer Arena on Monday night to see lc rightfully reclaim it. A mesmerising performance, even out sleazing someone 30 years his junior.

If anyone has a video of it....

[Cheshire gal]

Icfan2,

Leonard knew he had iced this one. You could see that on his face.... nobody does it better... nobody.

[canuck]

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/mus ... 17lyl.html

Blouses stay on, but all the buttons are pressed

Bernard Zuel
November 10, 2010

Sometimes you feel that every Leonard Cohen concert in this late, late career revival tour, which began three years ago and shows no sign of ending, is a When Harry Met Sally moment. We watch a 76-year-old man mesmerise and eroticise, amuse and move, touch and tease, dance gaily and sing deeply in a now typically long and generous show (a little over three hours including interval; 27 songs including one recitation) and think ''I want what he's having''.

As he ends the night with a long, sinuous and playful Closing Time, where it doesn't seem out of the question that this mature audience could live out the lyrics ''all the women tear their blouses off/the men they dance on the polka-dots", you start thinking to yourself: hmm, does the merchandise stand stock Leonard's Signature Chamomile Tea?

However, it should be noted that this show started at less than optimum. Not bad, for Cohen doesn't do bad, not when there is the compelling blues of The Darkness and the slow soul of Born in Chains, both due on his next album, alongside the jauntiness of The Future and the seduction of Waiting for the Miracle.

But in that first hour Cohen seems subdued and somewhat disengaged, certainly by comparison with last year's chatty and wry performances. Is it tiredness or familiarity? Hard to say but transcendence, that defining feature of the 2009 shows, seems out of reach.

But I underestimate the restorative qualities of the interval's tea. Upon his return to the stage, a rejuvenated Cohen plays a mini set of sparse arrangement (his guitar and a touch of organ, with the voices of Sharon Robinson and the Webb sisters) but such explicit emotion that this big box of a room is compressed into a small bar. After a light run through Tower of Song, complete with rinky-dink rhythm box, Suzanne, Avalanche, A Singer Must Die and Sisters of Mercy paint darkened pictures that make us hold our breaths with something like awe.

From there everything else seems to fly, through the poetry of A Thousand Kisses Deep and the melody of So Long, Marianne through to the barbed play of I Tried to Leave You.

I don't even drink tea but I want what he's having.

[adam1]

Ummm, Closing Time and Born In Chains weren't played at the same show. Not sure which gig he is reviewing...

[sue7]

This is still processing at my end but by the time you read this, should work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMzE4BrZ1u4

Bed time.

Thank you so much, Adam! Great sound. What an extraordinary performance of this song...
Sue

[dce]

Ummm, Closing Time and Born In Chains weren't played at the same show. Not sure which gig he is reviewing...

Sounds to me like he is reviewing the November 8 show ... but Born In Chains wasn't played that night.

Maybe there really was something in the journalist's tea?


Dean (from Adelaide)

[bridger15]

http://gussilber.posterous.com/i-ache-i ... -play-an-0

November 9, 2010

Gus Silber's Twitter Overflow Blog
For stuff that doesn't fit into 140 characters or less

"I ache in the places where I used to play": An Evening with Leonard Cohen in Sydney, Monday, November 8, 2010



The lights go down and the ceremony begins.

They stride onto the stage, briskly, with purpose, a procession in black suits and black felt fedoras.
You wonder which one of them could be the Master, but as they take their places at their microphones and instruments, the lights fade back up and he is nowhere to be seen.
A few heartbeats go by, and then he walks in from the wings, with a wry smile and a doff of his Humphrey Bogart hat.
His jacket and trousers are hanging a little baggy, his grey shirt is buttoned up to the neck. But he looks dapper, urbane, like a Sicilian patrician, or the Man from Prudential.
He steeples his hands in greeting, he bows his head, and the band begins to play.
He is three-score-and-ten-and-six now, and when he drops to one knee at the feet of the seated guitarist, to sing the opening line of Dance Me to the End of Love - "Dance me to your beauty like a burning violin" - he looks prayerful and beseeching in his posture of atonement.
But we are sitting in judgement, on a cool November night in the Acer Arena at the Sydney Olympic Park, and all he has to do to win our forgiveness is to sing.
He is standing in the pool of light, his shoulders hunched, his knees bent, bird-like, bird-on-the-wire-like. His hands enfold the microphone and his eyes are shut, hooded by the brim of his hat.
His voice seems to have dropped a register over the years, but it is still as strong as the mountains, as dark as the night, and the songs are monumental.
They have been chiselled in places, dressed and embellished to tease us out of their familiarity, even though we have grown to love them as they are.
He caresses a wandering arpeggio from the strings of a black electric guitar, and then he shepherds it into the soft, silken serenade to Suzanne.
The six-piece band jams a smoky swirl of keyboards and guitar, like a Gospel song reborn, and it breaks into Bird On A Wire: "And I swear by this song, and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it up to thee."
The guitarist, sitting alone in his world, plays an intense Flamenco-style overture on a 12-string mandolin, the licks dancing like flames, high up on the fretboard, and then there is a hush that beckons the opening question of the Yom Kippur liturgy, Who By Fire.
But when he sings Hallelujah, he just sings Hallelujah from the start, getting up off his knees at the minor fall and the major lift, as the stage is bathed in a white glow of redemption.
He lifts his shiny black shoes a little during The Future, as if stepping on hot coals, and when he sings that there'll be "fires on the road and white girls dancing", his backing singers, the willowy Webb Sisters, suddenly step back and execute a perfect cartwheel in sync.
After the interval, he says "Thank you for coming back, I know that it's a school night", and he stands on his own at an old keyboard, hitting a button to kick-start a synthesised drum pattern.
"Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey," he sings. "I ache in the places where I used to play." He is singing about life in the Tower of Song, and making it sound like Heaven.
In the audience there are old couples with grey hair, and Goths with torn cardigans and black eyeshadow, and hippies and bikers and Buddhist monks with shaved heads and saffron robes.
He sings for three hours, and comes back for three encores, the greatest singer-songwriter-poet of his age: who else, at 76, can command an Olympic arena with a body of work that spans five decades, and covers every genre from pop to rock to folk to jazz to blues to cabaret?
But the image that stays with me, at the close of a sublime, transcendent evening, is of an old man in a charcoal suit, his hat in the air in an Arabesque, skipping into the wings, into the darkness, with his final words of the night resonating in my ears: "Thank you, my friends, for keeping my songs alive."

*Leonard Cohen's 2010 World Tour started in July in Zagreb in Croatia, and runs until December in Las Vegas in Nevada, covering 22 countries in Europe, North America, and Australasia. If you can't make it, the Leonard Cohen Live in London double-CD is an excellent substitute.

[bridger15]

Leonard Cohen - Acer Arena, November 8, 2010


Photo: Fiona Laughton

Clare Bowditch couldn't be more gracious. She was handpicked to open for Leonard Cohen on his Australian tour, and she remains completely humbled by this during her sweet but brief set. Accompanied by Melbourne multi-instrumentalist Pikelet on keyboards, she mostly plays tracks from her new album, Modern Day Addiction, and both ladies are totally at ease on the big stage.

In his trademark suit and trilby, Cohen arrives on stage with his nine-piece band and without a word slips into the sultry cabaret-esque 'Dance Me to the End of Love'. Behind them, the stadium is draped in simple curtains that fall from ceiling to stage, and this is repeated again at the back of the arena. It's a sore reminder that, yes, this is indeed an arena show, but if anyone has the capability to turn something soulless into something intimate, it is Cohen. 'Bird on the Wire' lets the cigarette baritone project skywards into the "cheap" seats, and those big screens do a good job showcasing the poet, face tender, eyes closed, hat low and fist curled to his face. During 'Chelsea Hotel', he falls to his knees, showing off the remarkable agility of someone 76 years old and into the third year of this tour.

Several times we're transported to bohemian Europe, with the startling 12-string gypsy guitar- and bandurria-playing mastery of Spaniard Javier Mas and the mysterious, Unetanneh Tokef-inspired 'Who By Fire' — a nod, of course, to Cohen's Jewish background. With their high-necked shirts, and their long, straight hair, the Webb Sisters provide sublime back-up vocals to Cohen, as does his long-time collaborator/muse Sharon Robinson.

'Tower of Song' and 'Suzanne' reignite the second set after an interval. Cohen is a democratic member of this 10 piece, oft stepping out of the spotlight and retreating during various solos. He is humble and good humoured when he addresses the crowd. Despite having been swindled out of millions by his former manager, Cohen remains surprisingly Zen about the whole ordeal, reminding us of a world outside this stadium ridden with suffering. The crowd get to their feet at the end of 'Hallelujah' and 'I'm Your Man' — energy has finally arrived at Acer. Cohen has been generous with his stage time and has transported us out from his room and through his eternal world with a classy set of wistful songs.

Fiona Laughton
10 Nov 2010

[sturgess66]

More video from the 11/9/10 show -

Uploaded by "just4keks" - Thanks!

"Hallelujah"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLq_pZ98s6k

[sturgess66]

From the 11/8/10 show -

Uploaded by "bubblecooly" - Thanks!

"The Partisan"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbtT89dIPgc

[sturgess66]

From Joey -

Thanks to everyone who came to Acer Arena for two killer shows. Everyone in the entourage had wonderful time.
* Above Sydney, Australia