Yeah, you are right about 'Various Positions' being more of a band album then "Dear heather." I perhaps meant that 'heather," in places, sounds more natural and organic then most of Cohen's recent stuff. I first heard "Dear heather" as downloads and only recently got around ...

The song itself is excellent (as are Byron's lyrics). What lets the song down is the horrible synthetic sax-drenched music behind it. If you took Leonard's voice off the song it could be any soulless, session muso dominated song from the 80s. As soon as Leonard's voice comes in, it redeems the song,...

Thanks for the link to the website, Tom. I listened to quite a few of the songs listed. The sound quality is fairly abysmal on quite a few of them, but there's a few gems (ie Storeroom, Do I have To Dance).

The word kitsch is usually applied to music that borders on "novelty" or "camp." I've certainly never thought of Leonard Cohen albums as being "novelty" albums.

Regarding the outtakes posts: I wonder if Leonard has ever recorded his own versions of some of the songs that have only been covered by other people, ie "Priests" by Judy Collins, "Come Spend The Morning" by Lee Hazlewood, "Song of Bernedette" by Jennifer Warnes, etc. ...

Having read through most of the actual reviews of Dear Heather I'm annoyed by the amount of undeserved criticism this album has attracted since it's release. Most of this criticisms seem, at best, glib, and at worst hopelessly misinformed. One of the most persistent criticisms is of the amount of sy...