Leonard Cohen

New Skin for the Old Ceremony

Marred by a few lackluster songs

Review Score:

(8/10)
I must admit, Leonard Cohen bounces back and forth between my #1 and #2 spots on my "best musicians of all time" list (he and Tom Waits switch places depending on my mood). Yet with the exception of his first album I find it hard to give any of his albums five stars. Typically Cohen includes a few songs that simply aren't as evocative or haunting as the masterpieces that peek out between them. On this disk that slot is taken by the songs "Why Don't You Try" and "Is This What You Wanted?". Both songs limp along ably enough to their finishes; it is just that in contrast to the genius displayed elsewhere by Cohen, they come off as filler songs that push the total track number up high enough to call this an album. These are songs that lesser lyricists would be happy to call their best, but with my higher standards for Cohen I am still holding out for an album as consistent as his first.

You may be wondering now why I count Cohen as my first-or-second favorite artist after I have expressed such opinions about his music, and the reason is simply this: that when he's good, he's so good that he blows everyone else away. One of his greatest songs is on this album: "Chelsea Hotel #2". This song at first drove me, like Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35", to wonder where the first version of "Chelsea Hotel" had gone. but after one listen to the song, I decided it was irrelevant. The version Cohen has here is flawless. I have heard that this song was written for Janis Joplin, but personal details become unnecessary in the face of such a heartfelt and powerful song. One does not need to have had the exact experience Cohen describes to understand the feelings he is converying; you only need to have one "fallen robin" in your past and his song can mutate into your story, told better than you ever could tell it. The song also contains a bitter and ironic last verse that rivals "Dress Rehearsal Rag" on "Songs of Love and Hate" for reversal of audience expectations.

But don't think that's the only good song here. "A Singer Must Die" is a poignant allegory, one even more relevant as we witness loss of traditional civil liberties in the US and in other parts of the world. "Who By Fire" is justly ranked among Cohen's best also, detailing what I hear as a list of different ways to die, though I would welcome remarks from anyone with a different interpretation of the meaning of this song. "Who by Fire" also demonstrates the proper way for Cohen to integrate the choir of females he employs as back-up singers into his songs in a tasteful manner. In later albums he seems to abuse their existence, allowing them to upstage his mellow, despairing voice. But here they blend perfectly. Finally, "There is a War" foreshadows Cohen's explicitly political turn in his later album "The Future". All in all, this ranks among Cohen's better recordings, and it is worth wading through the mediocre tunes to get to his true gems.

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