Leonard Cohen

Songs of Love and Hate

Sheer mastery

Review Score:

(10/10)
This is perhaps Leonard Cohen's greatest album. And for any artist with a catalog as rich, as rewarding, as intoxicating, and as deep as Leonard Cohen's, that's is a high compliment indeed. Every single song here is absolutely great. As incredible as Cohen's first two albums were (particularly the classic debut), this third effort is leaps and bounds above both of them. Cohen had clearly grown as a songwriter. Notice the deeper, more meaningful, more emotionally intense lyrics. Notice the more complex (lyrically and musically) and longer songs overall. Notice, even, how much Cohen had improved as a singer. While I never found his voice to be as bad as many do, his "sweet monotone" enunciates more clearly his poetry than it did before. And speaking of poetry, this blew away everything that he wrote before (not to mention what other people had written), and still stands as some of his finest. The music had grown in scope as well. Whereas the first two albums ran slightly monotonous by record's end with their nearly non-varying musical backing, Songs of Love and Hate is musically diverse. It's apparent from the first song, the masterpiece Avalanche, that Cohen has something more musically ambitious in store for us here, and the entire album pervades with alternate guitar stylings, orchestrations, backing vocals, sound effects, and more. There are deep, harrowing songs on this album of the likes that Cohen had never done before (and has really never done since); for example, the aforementioned masterpiece Avalanche (covered by Nick Cave), the harshly self-flaggelating Dress Rehearsal Rag, and the oft-overlooked excellent track, Sing Another Song, Boys. Last Year's Man seems to address the darker side of art. Diamons In The Mine is a great song as well, and Love Calls You By Your Name is a classic. Famous Blue Raincoat is the classic written in the form of a letter. Joan of Arc is one of the best examples of Cohen's poetry. These songs and this album are absolute masterpieces; there's no other way of putting it. Buy it today; your music collection is simply not complete without it.

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