Leonard Cohen

Songs of Love and Hate

A Mesmerizing Look At The Mad Genius Of Leonard Cohen!

Review Score:

(10/10)
Leonard Cohen has been described as the poet of existential despair, and none of his several vintage albums is more edgy and desperate than this thirty year old offering with its white on black lettering and stark unshaven images of a man on the very verge of madness. On the back cover of the original album was large block-lettered script reading " They locked up a man/Who wanted to rule the world/ The fools/ They locked up the wrong man". Ah, such saintly pretensions! Yet Cohen is mad like a fox, cleverly setting his snares for those fools who don't recognize his own magnetic powers, charisma, and outright poetic genius. In "Avalanche" he sets the first proper insane tone, carefully evoking his curious blend of old world images and slamming them against contradictory notions like sexy religiosity, employing profoundly arcane symbols alongside profane contemporary longings.

He continues his mad mystic pounding on the door of his inner longings with "Last Year's Man". His own comment on the song is that he always waits for the children's chorus. It and he are both haunting here, his use of old testament language powerfully drawing a word picture that leaves one gasping for air. "Dress Rehearsal Rag" is an ironic improvisation of an old poem from the "Spice Box of Earth" book he first published in the late 1950s, while "Love Calls You By Your Name" is another evocative and mysterious display of his amazing poetic genius put to good musical use. I have always loved "Famous Blue Raincoat", a long and revealing tale of a man writing to a old friend who cuckolded him with his wife, filling him in on his own feelings, perceptions, and surprising take on the affair. It is hard to describe "Joan Of Arc", except to say she is an emblematic figure to Cohen, a kind of sexy virgin, a saintly vixen, a womanly icon embodying both the purity and prurience of the world in a single ethereal figure. Of course he wants to bed her. Cohen is nothing if not hypnotically suggestive, and he takes one on a mind's ride that makes you want to either jump off a bridge or scream in delight. This is a superb album by a consummate artist, whose voice and style fit his evocative message like a well-worn leather glove. Black on black, of course. Enjoy!

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