The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

Leonard Cohen's last studio album (2016)
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

Post by Born With The Gift Of A G »

Leonard Cohen: You Want it Darker

The Times (UK)

21st October 2016

Reviewer: Will Hodgkinson

Rating: ★★★★☆


Now firmly in his twilight years — he’s 82 — Leonard Cohen has decided to play out the time he has left as the world’s most poetic saloon bar crooner. “A million candles burning for a love that never came,” he croaks on the title track to You Want it Darker, a synagogue choir harmonising in the background and a cantor singing in Hebrew, making the apparent religious disillusion of the words less obvious.

Cohen takes a nonchalant approach to morbid dread, admitting that the demons he’s struggled with have been “middle class and tame” and setting his words not to anything grandiose but to a subtle blend of church organs, twanging guitars and background harmonies. He’s shuffling towards the dying of the light at his own leisurely pace.

Cohen seems to be tying up any loose ends while simultaneously announcing he’s throwing in the towel, folding his hand and generally packing it all in. “I don’t need a lover, so blow out the flame,” he sings over the funereal shuffle of Leaving the Table, suggesting he is yet to sample the wonders of This message has been classified as spam and will be deleted by the moderators.

Cohen told the crowd at a playback for the album in Los Angeles last week that he intended “to live for ever” but the message here is closer to the one he sent to his old muse Marianne Ihlen on her deathbed, when he told her he was not far behind. Each song ponders on death in one way or another.
You can never say never again, as countless rockers tempted out of retirement by lucrative tour offers will attest, but You Want it Darker does sound like one long goodbye. “It’s au revoir. I’m running late. They’ll close the bar. I used to play one mean guitar,” he growls on the languorous Traveling Light. Cohen is turning his final years into a work of art just as acutely as Bowie did, albeit in his own stylishly maudlin way. (Sony)
"Little lady.....I AM Kris Kristofferson....."
London: 10 & 11 May 1993; Manchester: 17, 18, 19 & 20 June 2008; Vienna: 25 September 2008; London: 17 November 2008; Paris: 26 November 2008; Manchester: 30 November 2008; Liverpool: 14 July 2009; Paris: 28 September 2012; Manchester: 31 August 2013; Leeds: 7 September 2013.
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

Post by Goldin »

RYM users' rating of this year's singles:

4
Leonard Cohen
You Want It Darker
Singer/Songwriter, Art Pop
RYM Rating: 3.89 | Ratings: 163 | Reviews: 8

https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/single/2016
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

Post by Herbsttag »

Goldin wrote:RYM users' rating of this year's singles:

4
Leonard Cohen
You Want It Darker
Singer/Songwriter, Art Pop
RYM Rating: 3.89 | Ratings: 163 | Reviews: 8

https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/single/2016
What in the world does Art Pop mean?
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

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Good question! (and not so good answer) -

https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/Art+Pop/
Art pop is a loose subcategory of Pop that is characterized for its manipulation of signs and its synthesis of cultural art forms; where artists reflect an affinity with art school practices or other musical/non-musical art sources such as pop art, literature, cinema, traditional music, theater performances, Experimental, Electronic, and so on. This can be musically expressed through the subversion or deconstruction of various styles, for example, by reimagining historical genres in a disparately contemporary setting, or by adopting traditions from 'serious music' (like those from Western Classical Music). In any case, the music remains in a fairly pop context.
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

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Well that makes sense... sort of.
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

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Leonard Cohen Explores The Fragility Of Life In 'You Want It Darker'
October 31, 2016
Heard on Fresh Air (NPR)
Ken Tucker
Leonard Cohen has just released an album of new songs called "You Want It Darker." Cohen, who is now 82, writes frequently about the fragility of life. Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review.
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/31/500077255 ... -it-darker

transcript + download button
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

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You Want It Darker press conference - 5
https://www.facebook.com/leonardcohen/v ... 372569644/
In this video Leonard Cohen discusses the lyrics of the song You Want It Darker...
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

Post by MarieM »

Interview with Adam about You Want It Darker in Rolling Stone.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/featu ... um=twitter
Rolling Stone

Inside Leonard Cohen's Late-Career Triumph 'You Want It Darker'

After an epic tour, the singer fell into poor health. But he dug deep and came up with a powerful new album

By Andy Greene
November 2, 2016

Leonard Cohen has rarely been seen in public since he wrapped up his "Grand Tour" at the Vector Arena in Auckland, New Zealand, on December 21st, 2013, with a joyous encore of the Drifters' "Save the Last Dance for Me." That five-year, 387-date global odyssey – where he played for well over three hours a night – was a massive musical (and financial) success. But not long after, Cohen began to suffer serious physical problems. "Among many other things, he had multiple fractures of the spine," says his son Adam. "He has a lot of hard miles on him."

The 82-year-old singer-songwriter now lives on the second floor of a house he shares with his daughter Lorca in the Wilshire neighborhood of Los Angeles. (Lorca is raising a five-year-old daughter whose father is Rufus Wainwright.) In Cohen's words, he's "confined to barracks" due to severe mobility issues, but he was determined not to let that stop him from recording his new LP, You Want It Darker. He began work on the album about a year and a half ago, but he had to stop when producer Patrick Leonard (who worked with Cohen on his last two albums) suffered what Adam Cohen describes as "very serious personal problems." Cohen then invited Adam, a singer-songwriter in his own right, to come in and complete the project. "It's increasingly rare for children to be so useful to their parents," says Adam. "To be in such intimate circumstances for such a lengthy period of time with my father was filled with sweetness for me."

Adam turned Cohen's house into a makeshift recording studio, placing an old Neumann U 87 microphone on the dining room table and filling the living room with computers, outboard gear and speakers. He also brought in an orthopedic medical chair for his father. "It's designed to accommodate someone spending many, many hours on it," says Adam. "You can sleep in it, eat in it and practically stand in it." A laptop ran ProTools – Leonard merely had to sing. "Occasionally, in bouts of joy, he would even, through his pain, stand up in front of the speakers, and we'd repeat a song over and over like teenagers," Adam adds. "Sometimes medical marijuana intervened and played a role." The vocal tracking became a form of therapy for Leonard. "At times I was very worried about his health, and the only thing that buoyed his spirits was the work itself," says Adam. "And given the incredible and acute discomfort he was suffering from in his largely immobilized state, [creating this album] was a great distraction."

In typical Cohen fashion, he obsessed over every lyric of the nine songs, most of which were written in the past few years (though "Treaty," featuring the lyric "I don't care who takes this bloody hill/I'm angry and I'm tired all the time," dates back a decade). Some of the songs were dictated into his phone; others he jotted down on a notepad he keeps in the breast pocket of his jacket. "It comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops," he said at a recent L.A. press event. "Some people are graced with a flow. Some people are graced with something less than a flow. I'm one of those."

Although Cohen was never able to make it to the recording studio, where a team of about a dozen musicians, including organist Neil Larsen, guitarist Bill Bottrell and bassist Michael Chaves, worked on the material, he was still very much in command of the sessions. "I spoke to him at length, got his instructions before every session," says Adam. "Then I faithfully tried to serve what I understood his vision to be in the studio. He also had final say and veto power. If you listen to this record versus the other recent ones, it's a little bit more sparse and acoustic."

Today, Cohen is in slightly better health than he was during the making of You Want It Darker. But any sort of tour in support of the album, or even a single live appearance, is highly unlikely. "He's meticulous and requires a lot of rehearsing," says Adam. "It's just not in the cards." But there are at least three songs that didn't make the album, and they may provide a beginning for the next one. "They say that life is a beautiful play with a terrible third act," says Adam. "If that's the case, it must not apply to Leonard Cohen. Right now, at the end of his career, perhaps at the end of his life, he's at the summit of his powers."
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

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Readers' Poll: 10 Best Leonard Cohen Albums
See which album managed to top 'The Future,' 'I'm Your Man' and 'Songs of Leonard Cohen'


http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists ... ms-w447900

Image

Leonard Cohen's new LP You Want It Darker is probably one of the best albums ever released by a person over the age of 80. It's just part of his astounding career renaissance that began when he returned to the road in 2008 for a stunning tour that lasted five years. The show featured songs from throughout his long career, which began all the way back in 1967 with Songs of Leonard Cohen. His singing voice has changed quite a bit since those days and the music has grown much more sophisticated, but brilliant words have never diminished. In honor of You Want It Darker, we had our readers select Cohen's best albums. Here are the results.

10. 'Ten New Songs'

Not a lot of people were focused on Leonard Cohen in 2001. He'd pretty much vanished from the public eye following his 1993 tour in support of The Future. He spent a great deal of time at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles where he worked as the personal assistant to Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi. Recording new music simply wasn't a part of his life, but in 1999, he began spending part of his time at his daughter's house in L.A. His longtime backup singer and occasional creative collaborator Sharon Robinson started coming by, and they began writing new tunes together. It took a couple of years, but they eventually produced 10 brand-new songs. Always liking a simple title, Cohen called it Ten New Songs. Robinson and Cohen lock vocals on most songs to stunning effect. It didn't get much attention at the time, but "In My Secret Life," "A Thousand Kisses Deep" and "Boogie Street" all came alive on the Grand Tour and are now seen as classics.

9. 'New Skin For the Old Ceremony'

New Skin For the Old Ceremony was the fourth and final chapter from the folkie period of Cohen's early musical career. The songs are sparse, though often punctuated with percussion, banjo and mandolin. Critics were torn when it came out, and it became his first album to not even touch the Billboard album charts. It did far better overseas, beginning a long tradition of faraway audiences appreciating Cohen more than fans in North America. "Chelsea Hotel #2," "Who By Fire" and "I Tried to Love You" are the standout tracks and were part of his live show for decades.

8. 'Songs From a Room'

Proving that his 1967 debut LP was no fluke, Cohen came back in 1969 with the brilliant Songs From a Room. This was an era of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Stooges, but even without loud guitars Cohen was able to pull in a devoted audience with sparse songs like "Bird on the Wire," "Lady Midnight" and "The Partisan." The latter is a cover of World War II-era song about the French Resistance and Cohen even sings a verse in French. It's unlike anything else in his catalog, and only grew in power when he sang it as an old man decades later. Songs From a Room peaked at Number 63 on the Billboard Album Chart. That may seem like a dismal showing, but it's actually the best he did until Old Ideas in 2012.

7. 'Recent Songs'

After the insanity of creating Death of a Ladies Man with Phil Spector, Leonard Cohen was quite ready to make a quiet, normal album. Recent Songs is reminiscent of Cohen's earliest albums, though gypsy violin and Jennifer Warnes' beautiful vocals bring it in a new direction. Warnes became a key Cohen collaborator in the years ahead, and in the 1980s she became famous on her own for singing "Up Where We Belong" with Joe Cocker and "(I've Had) the Time of My Life" with Bill Medley. Back in the 1970s, though, she added pristine harmonies to classics like "The Guests" and "The Gypsy's Wife." Even by Cohen's dismal standards, this one sold poorly and made Columbia less than eager to keep putting these albums out. But to their credit, they never dropped him.

6. 'Various Positions'

Columbia Records has gotten a lot of shit over the years about initially refusing to release Various Positions, but imagine it from their perspective. It's 1984 and the biggest stars in music are Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Prince and Michael Jackson. One of your lesser-known artists, who has never seen an album hit higher than Number 63, turns in an album where he's singing along to a cheap-o synthesizer. Nothing sounds remotely like a hit. It's not their fault for not realizing that "Hallelujah" would become one of the most beloved songs of the later part of the 20th Century. They didn't know "Dance Me to the End of Love" would be the opening song to about 600 straight concerts. This was just another album destined to wind up in the cutout bin, and when they finally did release it, that's what happened. All that said, the record is absolutely brilliant. Cohen found a way to make music in the MTV age that sounded modern – but not soulless. His voice had deepened considerably, but pairing that with backup singers and synths resulted in something wondrous.

5. 'Death of a Ladies Man'

Death of a Ladies Man is really the black swan of the Leonard Cohen catalog. It's the album where he had the least creative control and the one he recorded at the height of his debauchery. Sprinkle in a perpetually-drunk Phil Spector (often wielding a gun) recording him in insane late night sessions and you've got one nutty outlier of an album. The theory was that by pairing one genius with another you'd somehow get a double the genius, but the result is pretty much the least-loved album either of them ever made. It does, however, have its fans, as its placement on this list suggests. "Don't Go Home With Your Hard On" and "True Love Needs No Trace" are memorable songs, but it's telling that Cohen never touches any of these tunes when he tours. They probably all cause too many unsettling flashbacks.

4. 'I'm Your Man'

The 1980s were not a kind time to most musical icons of the 1960s. Giants like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney tried to land on MTV and Top 40 radio by making songs they felt were modern, but all they did was alienate their old fans and fail to win over any new ones. The result is a pile of terrible albums by some of the most creative musical minds of the century. By some miracle, Leonard Cohen completely escaped this curse. It helped that he wrote some of the best songs of his life in that time, and that he teamed up with producers like Roscoe Beck, Jean-Michel Reusser and Michel Robidoux. They weren't afraid to use synths and drum machines, but they never sounded cheesy. They actually sounded majestic in Cohen's hands. Every song on this album – including "First We Take Manhattan," "Everybody Knows" and "Take This Waltz" – is a classic, though we're still trying to understand what the hell "Jazz Police" means. These songs would serve as the backbone of his live show for the rest of his career.

3. 'Songs of Leonard Cohen'

Leonard Cohen was a distinguished 33-year-old poet when his debut LP Songs of Leonard Cohen landed on store shelves in the final days of 1967. The public knew "Suzanne" from the Judy Collins cover the previous year, but few people had heard the Canadian sing his own words. His voice wasn't anything to get too excited about, but the lyrics were just stunning. Nobody had heard anything like "So Long, Marianne," "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" and "Sisters of Mercy" since Bob Dylan. The album peaked at Number 83, but everyone that bought it knew they had something special. It turned out he was just getting started.

2. 'The Future'

Following up I'm Your Man was a difficult task, but Cohen was quite up for it. He began work on The Future while dating Rebecca De Mornay, and she even wound up with a producer credit. But romantic bliss didn't exactly seep into the lyrics, considering the album kicks off with a vision of the apocalypse. "Give Me Christ," he sings on the title track. "Or give me Hiroshima/Destroy another fetus now/We don't like children anyhow/I've seen the future, baby it is murder." The rest of the album is filled with equally brilliant tunes like "Waiting for the Miracle" (famously used in the film Natural Born Killers), "Democracy" and "Anthem." The album was met with rave reviews and it gave his career a lot of momentum, but it would be nine years before he recorded another album.

1. 'Songs of Love and Hate'

In late 1970, Leonard Cohen went down to Nashville with Bob Dylan's producer and Elton John's string arranger and cut an album unlike anything else that had ever been heard. He was near the peak of his songwriting powers at this point with masterpieces like "Joan of Arc," "Avalanche" and "Famous Blue Raincoat" just pouring out of him. The latter tune could be his single best lyric, even if it contains evidence of his brief flirtation with Scientology in the line, "Did you ever go clear?" It's the story of a love triangle involving a man, his brother and a woman named Jane. Cohen has complained that the story doesn't quite make sense, but the confusion around the narrative somehow just adds to the power of the song. This isn't a wrong note or word on this whole album. It peaked at Number 145, which just proves that the sales charts don't mean much of anything.
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

Post by Roy »

Inside Leonard Cohen's Late-Career Triumph 'You Want It Darker'
After an epic tour, the singer fell into poor health. But he dug deep and came up with a powerful new album


http://www.rollingstone.com/music/featu ... ph-w447921

Image

Read how Leonard Cohen's son helped the frail but still brilliant singer-songwriter craft his poetic new LP 'You Want It Darker.' Brian Rasic/Getty

Leonard Cohen has rarely been seen in public since he wrapped up his "Grand Tour" at the Vector Arena in Auckland, New Zealand, on December 21st, 2013, with a joyous encore of the Drifters' "Save the Last Dance for Me." That five-year, 387-date global odyssey – where he played for well over three hours a night – was a massive musical (and financial) success. But not long after, Cohen began to suffer serious physical problems. "Among many other things, he had multiple fractures of the spine," says his son Adam. "He has a lot of hard miles on him."

The 82-year-old singer-songwriter now lives on the second floor of a house he shares with his daughter Lorca in the Wilshire neighborhood of Los Angeles. (Lorca is raising a five-year-old daughter whose father is Rufus Wainwright.) In Cohen's words, he's "confined to barracks" due to severe mobility issues, but he was determined not to let that stop him from recording his new LP, You Want It Darker. He began work on the album about a year and a half ago, but he had to stop when producer Patrick Leonard (who worked with Cohen on his last two albums) suffered what Adam Cohen describes as "very serious personal problems." Cohen then invited Adam, a singer-songwriter in his own right, to come in and complete the project. "It's increasingly rare for children to be so useful to their parents," says Adam. "To be in such intimate circumstances for such a lengthy period of time with my father was filled with sweetness for me."

Adam turned Cohen's house into a makeshift recording studio, placing an old Neumann U 87 microphone on the dining room table and filling the living room with computers, outboard gear and speakers. He also brought in an orthopedic medical chair for his father. "It's designed to accommodate someone spending many, many hours on it," says Adam. "You can sleep in it, eat in it and practically stand in it." A laptop ran ProTools – Leonard merely had to sing. "Occasionally, in bouts of joy, he would even, through his pain, stand up in front of the speakers, and we'd repeat a song over and over like teenagers," Adam adds. "Sometimes medical marijuana intervened and played a role." The vocal tracking became a form of therapy for Leonard. "At times I was very worried about his health, and the only thing that buoyed his spirits was the work itself," says Adam. "And given the incredible and acute discomfort he was suffering from in his largely immobilized state, [creating this album] was a great distraction."

In typical Cohen fashion, he obsessed over every lyric of the nine songs, most of which were written in the past few years (though "Treaty," featuring the lyric "I don't care who takes this bloody hill/I'm angry and I'm tired all the time," dates back a decade). Some of the songs were dictated into his phone; others he jotted down on a notepad he keeps in the breast pocket of his jacket. "It comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops," he said at a recent L.A. press event. "Some people are graced with a flow. Some people are graced with something less than a flow. I'm one of those."

Although Cohen was never able to make it to the recording studio, where a team of about a dozen musicians, including organist Neil Larsen, guitarist Bill Bottrell and bassist Michael Chaves, worked on the material, he was still very much in command of the sessions. "I spoke to him at length, got his instructions before every session," says Adam. "Then I faithfully tried to serve what I understood his vision to be in the studio. He also had final say and veto power. If you listen to this record versus the other recent ones, it's a little bit more sparse and acoustic."

Today, Cohen is in slightly better health than he was during the making of You Want It Darker. But any sort of tour in support of the album, or even a single live appearance, is highly unlikely. "He's meticulous and requires a lot of rehearsing," says Adam. "It's just not in the cards." But there are at least three songs that didn't make the album, and they may provide a beginning for the next one. "They say that life is a beautiful play with a terrible third act," says Adam. "If that's the case, it must not apply to Leonard Cohen. Right now, at the end of his career, perhaps at the end of his life, he's at the summit of his powers."

Leonard Cohen with his son Adam at an event for 'You Want It Darker' in October Frank Micelotta/Sony Music Canada

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http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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On Twitter Sharon Robinson posted this link:

https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/chris- ... nard-cohen
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You Want It Darker press conference - 6
https://www.facebook.com/leonardcohen/v ... 176074644/
In this video Leonard Cohen discusses spirituality...
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

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https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/review ... -it-darker
We should listen closely to Leonard Cohen while we still can
By Erik Thompson / 04 November 2016, 09:30 GMT

You Want It Darker
Leonard Cohen
9 (of 10)

No matter how dire the headlines have gotten as of late, Leonard Cohen is here to remind us that things can all get worse. We could be living in a world without Leonard Cohen.

On his 14th studio album, You Want It Darker, the 82-year-old Cohen frequently conjures haunting scenes where his singular presence is fading and his creative light is starting to dim. Melancholy lyrical ruminations on fatality are nothing new for Cohen, but on these nine new songs he seems resigned – even comforted – that the end is getting near.

“I’m ready, my Lord,” Cohen knowingly sighs on the lead-off title track. “If you are the dealer, let me out of the game / If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame /  You want it darker - we kill the flame.” Cohen and his soulful background singers evoke Abraham’s desperate proclamation to God (from Genesis 22:1) in the swelling gospel-like chorus, “Hineni, hineni,” which translates from the Hebrew to “Here I am.” Cohen is not hiding in the shadows looking to coax a few more stolen days from his maker; he’s illuminating precisely where he’s making his grand final stand, ready for the cryptic uncertainty of whatever mystery comes next.

These songs have the funereal grace of David Bowie’s elegant final goodbyes (The Next Day and Blackstar), as well as Bob Dylan’s trio of reflective, mournful albums that helped usher in – and bring some clarity to – the fractious start of the 21st Century (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times). But each of these paragons of modern pop have their own distinctive way of expressing how their respective journeys draw nearer to the end, as well as their own poetic manner of embracing, or brazenly refuting, the darkness that awaits us all.  

After Cohen startled his fans by admitting in a recent profile in The New Yorker that he was “ready to die,” he eventually backtracked a bit by claiming, “I’ve always been into self-dramatization. I intend to live forever.” And while Cohen’s works have an eternal quality to them, the man himself won’t always be around to make sense of the world’s futility for us, and we should listen closely to him while we still can. 

“Treaty” is a wistful elegy to a lost love that can also double as a plaintive contemplation on the complicated relationship that Cohen’s fans have with the idealized version of the artist that doesn't truly exist: “I’m angry and I’m tired all the time / I wish there was a treaty between your love and mine / I’m so sorry for that ghost I made you be / Only one of us was real, and that was me.” The apology is poignant, but unnecessary, because in order to continuously share these vulnerable parts of himself with those who love him, spirits of some sort have to be summoned – and these imaginative, artistic specters will take his place when he ultimately leaves us all behind. 
Throughout You Want It Darker, Cohen routinely dismisses the constructs of both salvation or forgiveness, and he seems personally disinterested in achieving either glory – for neither one can save him now. “I better hold my tongue / I better take my place / Lift this glass of blood / Try to say the grace / Sounded like the truth / But it’s not the truth today,” he intones on the elegiac hymn “It Seemed the Better Way.” Cohen is constructing his own religion here over nine songs in a scant 36 minutes. Indeed, he’s been doing that throughout his entire exalted career, converting devout believers with each new mythical fable he puts to song. 

And that unwavering connection between Cohen and his dedicated fans and family (son Adam Cohen was at his side handling the album’s spare, refined production) is ultimately the solitary thing that can drive away the darkness and keep the creativity flickering within his venerable heart. “If the sea were sand alone / And the flowers made of stone / And no one that you hurt could ever heal / Well, that’s how broken I would be / What my life would seem to me / If I didn’t have your love to make it real.” 

Leonard Cohen has spent his entire career illustrating both the fiery and fatal sides of love through his words and his music, and anyone who has listened to his songs has learned something true about themselves in the process. Cohen has remained a beacon of inspirational light in a world gradually consumed by vile intolerance and abhorrent characters, but through his music we can all join him in keeping the darkness at bay for as long as we possibly can.
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

Post by swisschris »

For those of you who speak German, here's the extensive review I wrote for Swiss online magazine nahaufnahmen.ch about Leonard's new album:

https://www.nahaufnahmen.ch/2016/11/05/ ... it-darker/

2008:Lyon July 9th, Lörrach July 25th, Zurich October 25th;
2009: Nimes August 20th;
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Re: The Darker album: Interviews and reviews in the media

Post by Athnuachan »

There is a good 4 page Leonard Cohen supplement in today's Irish Times ( Saturday 12th.) After the desolation of yesterday's announcement I have found it a good way to say goodbye.
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