The Mail on Sunday review of DH
Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2004 7:20 pm
"Stars of the Seventies...
Tim De Lisle
Something is happening to Leonard Cohen at the grand old age of 70: he is beginning to receive the recognition he deserves.
Always a cult figure, he seems to appeal more and more to his fellow artists. His songs keep featuring in soundtracks: on The OC and The L Word, twice in the new Wim Wenders film, and, strangest of all, in Shrek, where one of his masterpieces, Hallelujah, is sung by Rufus Wainwright, leaving millions of families to ponder the relevance of Canadian songwriters to green-skinned animated ogres.
Last month Judy Collins, the folk singer who helped discover Cohen, released a whole album of his songs. The number of covers of his work has passed 900. We know this because each one is logged on the website leonardcohenfiles.com, run by a Finnish accountant.
Cohen's own recordings have been much anthologised lately, and they needed to be, so show that the old jibe about 'music to slit your wrists to' had long since ceased to be true. Now here is a new album, his second in three years and only his 14th ever. Unusually for a pop record, it is clearly the work of an old gentleman. In a good way.
'Women,' he sings, 'have been exceptionally kind to my old age.' With its blend of candour, gallantry, self-deprecation and faint vanity, the line could have come from no other pen.
Elsewhere, he settles debts, salutes mentors, rereads old love letters and circles back to his first career, poetry. He sets a poem of his own to music and does the same for two other poets - F.R. Scott, a fellow Canadian who taught him at university, and Lord Byron, whose Go No More A-Roving opens the album. Byron turns out to be the greatest country-and-western lyricist to emerge from Georgian England.
But the real draw is Cohen's own way with words. He has said that he envies Hank Williams's 'deep simplicity', and his lyrics have become markedly more plain. The faithful may miss the old biblical imagery (doves, for once, are conspicuous by their absence), but in its place is a glowing directness.
On That Day tackles September 11 with gentle humanity; Nightingale is a graceful elegy for a friend. Dear Heather, dealing with longing, is only five lines long, and Cohen ends up mocking his own obsessiveness by spelling out every letter.
If this were an LP, side one might feel thin, apart from the haunting The Letters, but side two would be played over and over again. There For You is a piercingly intelligent love song, and The Faith, based on an old Quebec folk tune, has the stately magic of a hymn.
Whereas most of the backing tracks are home-made synth-folk, decorated with the usual angelic backing vocals, The Faith is beautifully played by a full band that makes you wish Cohen would do one last tour.
For the fans, this is another album to savour, with Cohen's resonant husk of a voice offering living proof that smoking isn't always a bad idea.
If you're not a fan, start with I'm Your Man, his wittiest album, or The Essential Leonard Cophen, a crisp summary of a quietly brilliant career."
Tim De Lisle
Something is happening to Leonard Cohen at the grand old age of 70: he is beginning to receive the recognition he deserves.
Always a cult figure, he seems to appeal more and more to his fellow artists. His songs keep featuring in soundtracks: on The OC and The L Word, twice in the new Wim Wenders film, and, strangest of all, in Shrek, where one of his masterpieces, Hallelujah, is sung by Rufus Wainwright, leaving millions of families to ponder the relevance of Canadian songwriters to green-skinned animated ogres.
Last month Judy Collins, the folk singer who helped discover Cohen, released a whole album of his songs. The number of covers of his work has passed 900. We know this because each one is logged on the website leonardcohenfiles.com, run by a Finnish accountant.
Cohen's own recordings have been much anthologised lately, and they needed to be, so show that the old jibe about 'music to slit your wrists to' had long since ceased to be true. Now here is a new album, his second in three years and only his 14th ever. Unusually for a pop record, it is clearly the work of an old gentleman. In a good way.
'Women,' he sings, 'have been exceptionally kind to my old age.' With its blend of candour, gallantry, self-deprecation and faint vanity, the line could have come from no other pen.
Elsewhere, he settles debts, salutes mentors, rereads old love letters and circles back to his first career, poetry. He sets a poem of his own to music and does the same for two other poets - F.R. Scott, a fellow Canadian who taught him at university, and Lord Byron, whose Go No More A-Roving opens the album. Byron turns out to be the greatest country-and-western lyricist to emerge from Georgian England.
But the real draw is Cohen's own way with words. He has said that he envies Hank Williams's 'deep simplicity', and his lyrics have become markedly more plain. The faithful may miss the old biblical imagery (doves, for once, are conspicuous by their absence), but in its place is a glowing directness.
On That Day tackles September 11 with gentle humanity; Nightingale is a graceful elegy for a friend. Dear Heather, dealing with longing, is only five lines long, and Cohen ends up mocking his own obsessiveness by spelling out every letter.
If this were an LP, side one might feel thin, apart from the haunting The Letters, but side two would be played over and over again. There For You is a piercingly intelligent love song, and The Faith, based on an old Quebec folk tune, has the stately magic of a hymn.
Whereas most of the backing tracks are home-made synth-folk, decorated with the usual angelic backing vocals, The Faith is beautifully played by a full band that makes you wish Cohen would do one last tour.
For the fans, this is another album to savour, with Cohen's resonant husk of a voice offering living proof that smoking isn't always a bad idea.
If you're not a fan, start with I'm Your Man, his wittiest album, or The Essential Leonard Cophen, a crisp summary of a quietly brilliant career."
