Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (2012)

http://cdn.stereogum.com/files/2011/11/Leonard-Cohen-Old-Ideas-608x620.jpg

http://www.leonardcohen.com/us/news/new-album-old-ideas-be-released-013112

No drum machines or 80s synths on "Show Me The Place."

that cover's mighty ugly

He's been designing his own covers for a long time.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41vN37R2jNL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr42uMJ9_fs

He's been designing his own covers for a long time

Yeah but that Various Positions cover is excellent, unlike this new one.

new single is amazing! Based on the two tracks so far it is looking like it might be his best since The Future.

Yeah but that Various Positions cover is excellent, unlike this new one.

Actually I kind of think you have that backwards, the only thing I hate on the new one is the font and positioning.

Am I the only one who loves Ten New Songs? So many great songs: In My Secret Life, Thousand Kissed Deep, Alexandra Leaving, Boogie Street... It's the one I've been listening to most recently.

i dig ten new songs -- part of me wishes it was produced slightly differently. songs are definitely great.

Yeah that kept me away at first. Hearing the songs he does on Live in London from that album made me revisit.

yeah i should hear that. i'm not even too down on the synth-iness of the record, sometimes i think it sounds great. but i wish it sounded a little *bigger*, or something.

the understated feel is a strength imo. like cohen sitting at his keyboard drinking wine at 4 in the morning.

Ten New Songs is probably my favourite, maybe second to the first one...

A third song streaming at The New Yorker. This album is amazing even if nothing is as good as these three songs.

Who is his collaborator this time around?

(Hmm, well, at the least "Show Me the Place" was written with ringer Patrick Leonard.)

x-p
i liked ten new songs as well. somehow the cheap synth sound made sense on that album. and the last one wasn't too bad neither. i am intrigued about the new one.

Yep, I liked Ten New Songs too, and still do, for the most part. Love these new songs too!

and ten new songs has a thousand kisses deep, which probably depresses me the most of all his songs,which is saying something (and is not a bad thing,or not necessarily,anyway)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/leonard-cohens-going-home-new-song.html

thousand kisses deep is up there with the best of his lyrics, I think. though i might prefer the spoken word version he did on the radio sometime in the 90s -- i remember hearing it and being blown away.

There's a feature in today's Guardian
about him which has a list of recommended albums, one of which is 2002's "The essential Leonard Cohen", reminded me of when Alan Partridge says his favourite Beatles LP is "The Best of The Beatles"

Except Cohen chose the tracklisting for Essential. It's a great way to get key tracks from less than stellar albums (at least, what the artist himself sees as key tracks, including one from the oft-overlooked Cohen Live.

yeah, that "essential" is a great listen -- biggest problem is that cohen ignores Death of a Ladies Man. But otherwise, it's about as good a 2-disc overview as you could hope for.

I might skip over the album I made with a gun to my head too!

Though personally, I like it a lot.

yeah i love that album, but cohen has bad associations with it -- maybe even worse associations now that Spector is where he is. does cohen play any of it live these days or is it just completely disowned?

I think it's not disowned, but dead and buried. I haven't heard of him playing any tracks from in in years and years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlrhcBlD2AY

I don't think anything from it has been played on the more recent tours.

oh nice. i've heard him do that live on Field Commander Cohen. that intro is great. the amped up doo wop vocals are hilarious. ditto the "sleepwalkin'" guitar solo...lenny doesn't take it to the bank at the end though, like on the record.
y'all might be interested in this if you haven't heard it yet: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/14264957104/blues-by-the-jews-its-a-very-nasty-song-i

streaming on npr http://www.npr.org/2012/01/22/145340430/first-listen-leonard-cohen-old-ideas

it's fantastic

listening now, yeah, sounds great.

I'm trying to hold out with just the three released songs. I really want to nestle in with this on disc and a bottle of wine.

xpost Yeah, "Essential" is pretty essential, given that I don't think the guy ever truly made a must-hear start-to-finish record, aside from maybe the first and "The Future," or maybe "I'm Your Man."

Wow, this new one is like Tom Waits dialed way down (which I sometimes wish Waits would do).

yeah, that "essential" is a great listen -- biggest problem is that cohen ignores Death of a Ladies Man. But otherwise, it's about as good a 2-disc overview as you could hope for.

The three-disc edition includes the title track. I got it at Target for $14 two years ago – one of my best purchases.

ah! had no idea there was a three disc version.

Yeah, me neither!

jeez, this is great so far

Are the songs collaborations or self-written?

don't know...
loving the backing vocals, nice that he's kept that more or less a constant throughout the career.

Crazy to Love You is mainly written by Anjani Thomas and about half the songs are co-writes with Pat Leonard.

Madonna's Pat Leonard? Sweet! Cohen singing over an "Open Your Heart" beat.

The beats, as such, on this album, are generally of the backroom closing time variety. Brushed snares, simple arrangements, end of the night, you don't have to go home, you just have to go ...

Love me some Patrick Leonard. His (good) stuff on "True Blue" is peak Madonna.

weird we were just listening to true blue while making dinner last night. had no idea he was involved with this one... it does not sound like true blue. maybe leonard's next one will have a little bit of that flavor.

In my head I'm hearing a slowed down "La Isla Bonita" with Leonard singing and it is awesome.

was listening to the NPR stream last night and what really struck me was how velvety and beautiful his voice sounds. is this the most pleasant his vocals have ever been in his career?

I broke down and listened last night too. I agree with you on the vocals; he's lost that burr and the voice is thick. Stunner of an album.

In my head I'm hearing a slowed down "La Isla Bonita" with Leonard singing and it is awesome.
yeah this would work! "Last night ... I dreamt of San Pedro..."

xpost Yeah, "Essential" is pretty essential, given that I don't think the guy ever truly made a must-hear start-to-finish record, aside from maybe the first and "The Future," or maybe "I'm Your Man."

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, January 23, 2012 10:41 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i don't think he's ever made an album that is not a must-hear start-to-finish record, except maybe dear heather.

unlike dylan cohen's current voice is not as obviously a product of the studio. dylan sounds like hell in at least half of his live shows. LC sounds utterly beautiful in every recent live recording i've heard. he clearly carefully watches the changes in his voice as he ages and adjusts his singing accordingly. i think he's singing as beautifully as ever (if differently than ever).

Man, "Show Me The Place" is gorgeous.

he has never been singing,

can you explain?

i always found that cohen's intonation has been very uniform, with very little ups and downs. there is a reason that he likes to work with female background singers who form a shining, melodic contrast to his deep voice and let it stand out even more. what i wrote about him never singing might be exaggerated, i meant to say that his style of delivering the words acoustically is not the classic way of tuneful singing, like bob dylan or lou reed it is coming from the school of sprechgesang. the talking blues might have been an influence. concerning the songs i have heard from "old ideas" i find that his voice is even more just a speaking voice than a singing voice. in a way this is the logical consequence of his way of intonating which became less and less musical and more and more sound, i.e. pure voice, during the years.

"less and less musical"

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/554/facepalm.jpg

1) sprechgesang is not necessarily any less "musical" than whatever you deem to be proper singing
2) cohen still deploys rhythm, patterned changes in intonation, etc. these are the sorts of things that often define "music"
3) "pure voice" -- what do you mean by this?
4) "i always found that cohen's intonation has been very uniform, with very little ups and downs" -- any more than anyone else working in a similar idiom? (btw you might want to re-listen to the 1st and 2nd albums)

i mean i get what you're on about, sort of, about the changes in l. cohen's singing, but you are making all kinds of generalizations and assumptions that are really suspect.

i have been listening to "old ideas" a little more now and

a) i have the feeling it is an excellent album which might be up there with his best work.
b) i am not sure about that change of his voice anymore. with "pure voice" i meant the voice as it is without any embellishments especially without musical (melodic) touches. on "old ideas" he does kind of sing like on the other records. there are minor changes of intonation and hints of singing. this point is still rather unclear for me, i have to think some more about it. in any case his voice is - in contrast to johnny cash eg whose voice was broken at the end - still very strong and up there.
c) it seems that we are arguing about semantics. you call sprechgesang singing, i call it sprechgesang. an actor who speaks in front of an audience uses rhythm and intonation as well but it does not mean that he sings.

you're right re. semantics, but i just can't help thinking that there are far more ambiguous examples of "singing" (beat poetry, hip hop, etc.) and if l. cohen in most of his stuff doesn't qualify i wonder if your definition is too narrow.

btw i also really like this album but doesn't else think the final song is a weird choice for a final song?

anyone else

"Amen" is a more fitting coda.

Listened to this yesterday, sounded excellent on the first play but I suspect I need to give it a fair while to sink in.

xp Totally. The last song feels like a bonus track after the album has closed properly with Lullaby.

I was deeply disappointed with Dear Heather so this is a joy. Not just because the tour reinvigorated his voice but because he avoids the self-sabotaging production of the last couple of records.

Maybe someone said this already but that album cover is very reminiscent of...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61fMBkp69hL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

i.e. ugly as fuck

wow this album is really good

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16228-leonard-cohen-old-ideas/

Compared to previous Pitchfork reviews of Leonard Cohen albums, this one is long on context, short on everything else.

That's one of one of my favorite reviews actually.

That's beautifully written.

I'm not wild about this review. The way I read it, it boils down to: "The songs are decent, the singing is stunning."

Not much on the songs themselves. Are they really that slight? Is this Leonard Cohen on 'autopilot? It's really 'the singer not the song'? About Leonard Cohen? I don't agree with this take on the album at all.

If I had any kind of brain I could probably articulate why. I'm still looking for a review of this record that offers some kind of insight into it.

Cohen's singing has mattered more to me than his songs for a couple of albums at least.

'Going Home'. It sounds to me an awful lot like Leonard Cohen writing a song from the perspective of God writing a song about Leonard Cohen.

I think this for a few reasons, one being the line 'a brief elaboration of a tube', which is a strange image that might be more clumsily expressed as something like 'mortal channel or conduit' for the narrator's voice. And the song's refrain is a message directly from God that Leonard, his conduit, has been instructed to sing. He's being asked by God to accept his mortality, that after death he can leave his sorrows behind, leave the 'costumes' and 'curtains'—his life as a performer, which is also the subject of the second and (in my opinion) kind of remarkable verse.

In the second verse, the narrator describes Leonard's songs, his life's work, his desire to write 'an anthem for forgiving' and a 'manual for living with defeat'—a desire that God rejects. He wants Leonard to 'do his bidding' and be his conduit here on earth.

Maybe this interpretation is totally off the mark. But even if it is, this is undoubtedly a strange song. It both sounds singular and like something else (is that even possible?), maybe an indirect commentary on songs like 'Anthem' and 'Hallelujah'.

In fact, on first listen, a lot of these songs seemed like elaborations or comments on themes he's explored before—kind of obvious, given the name of the record. 'Anyhow' reminded me somehow of 'I'm Your Man', I can't say why. There were a few others.

I guess the point is, I feel like there's a lot to unpack with this record. It rewards it. In a way, I think it begs for it, since a name as self referencing as 'Old Ideas' makes you wonder 'What ideas, exactly?' I think it's kind of lazy to suggest nothing more than 'well, he's still naked and filthy. Still a slave for love. Still a letch.'

yeah but most rock criticism won't do stuff like leonard cohen justice.

correction: most all

'a brief elaboration of a tube'

That some reviewers thought that was "tune" not "tube" makes it all the better - if it were "tune", then we'd be in relatively familiar "Tower of Song" territory, but this is something less consolatory.

The "tube" could be the vocal and/or digestive (and/or sexual ...) apparatus.

And the "brevity" could relate to the space which the "tube" occupies as well as its duration in time ...

what's the point of writing about leonard cohen if you're not gonna unpack the specifics in the songwriting? america's mobile otm (and also just that para about "going home" offered more insight than that review, which was total autopilot-writing-about-leonard-cohen, exactly what you expect to be said about him, exactly what anyone could realise after one cursory listen).

funny, a lot of the time critics make the mistake of veering too much into literary criticism territory but when it comes to someone like cohen who actually merits it, suddenly we're all vague and flowery again.

(i have nothing to offer yet b/c i'm still letting the album sink in - the luxury of not having to write about it! - maybe in uhhh a week or two weeks)

except that the kind of "literary criticism" that most rock critics are familiar with is the purely hermeneutic kind they were introduced to in high school and college... as opposed to the kind of scansion that leonard cohen really demands.

(a more reasonable way of putting that: scansion should come before hermeneutics.)

It's a question of time I think. I don't know about P4k but some critics had to review Old Ideas after one or two listens at a playback and no lyric sheet. As Lex often says, it's a shame there's nowhere that prints long album reviews weeks or months after the release date to take advantage of all of the insight that develops over time. If we're talking about assessing Cohen the way you would a poet, imagine any literary critic having to do justice to a poem after just a couple of readings. I think Mike Powell's a good enough critic that I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this.

that's why album reviews almost universally suck.

unless you have a really skilled person who has mastered the form. like christgau. even then it's more about the pleasure of good writing than any great insights or analysis.

on about my sixth or seventh full listen to this - haven't been able to listen to it except in full each time - and each one has been a more visceral, affecting experience.

the only time I've come close to crying at a concert was during Leonard Cohen's Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury a few years ago. That the sun was setting and I'd had about half an hour's sleep since the previous night ought to be taken account, but as he rumbled through hallelujah i found myself welling up.

show me the place is repeating the trick. just amazing.

I was at that gig, it was amazing, he totally dominated the stage and had everyone transfixed even though the only time he moved was to occasionally doff his hat. Also, corny fucker timed the playing of Hallelujah with the sunset.

I've not really been able to focus much on the lyrics yet, but so much of the musical appeal for me is in its economy. There's barely anything there in either vocal performance or arrangement that doesn't need to be there but yet it doesn't feel sparse, it feels really full and rich.

Oh I cry at concerts - well, mainly Glastonbury - regularly and that was one of those moments. Magic.

I spent large chunks of Leonard's Manchester Opera House show (June 08) either on the brink of tears, or openly blubbing. As did most of the audience, for that matter. Don't think I've ever seen so many hankies being wielded at a gig.

The time I saw him (in '93, in Minneapolis), he was playing a 2,000-seat old theater, and Sting was playing two blocks away in a 20,000-seat arena. He talked about running into Sting in the lobby of his hotel (he named the place, now gone I think, but I can't remember the name).

lol - "You want to live where the suffering ends/I wanna get outta town/C'mon baby, gimme a kiss/Stop writin' everything down"

i heard 'amen' on the radio last night and thought it was tom waits at first. so apparently i like leonard cohen? is this the best thing on the record?

It's good but there are better songs, but if you like that you'll probably like the overall vibe of the record.

Saw him on election eve... 3+ hour, 30 song show - I think only Springsteen and Prince were longer. Audience may have been the most diverse age range I've ever seen - teenagers who might only know "Hallelujah" to 70-80 year old couples who probably saw him back in the day. NO ONE talked or made noise - kinda eerie, but Cohen's quiet joy on stage is transfixing. Think I cried too.

Band was great - there's a Spanish 12-string bandurria player who's phenomenal.

"Going Home" is such a great heading-peacefully-toward-death song, holds its own with any of his best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6jvfSBZvn8

i've been listening to this a lot recently, for some reason. i haven't really gotten that far into the album because i just play this one over and over.

i wonder if my affinity for this song means i have a subconscious intuition that i am close to death, even though i feel healthy and fine.

Great song. "The brief elaboration of a tube" is such a perfect phrase that I almost can't bear to hear it sung.

I thought it was "brief elaboration of a tune"

I played this album last night – still love it. He's rock's Thomas Hardy: aging has reduced him to an eloquent husk, capable of rhymes by the yard and wit by the pound.

he was great in 'Bronson'

I'm relieved he's off crack and h tbh

I thought it was "brief elaboration of a tune"

Nah, the lyric sheet has "tube", which is an amazing image - so harsh. "Tune" fits too, but less interesting.

"Darkness" is such a fantastic song, band is really grooving and the lyrics are full of dark punchlines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWBTEngjktA

I caught the darkness
Drinking from your cup
I said is this contagious?
You said just drink it up

some dylanesque dialogue going down

cohen still doesn't get enough credit for being one of the funniest dudes around