Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen – Dear Heather (2004/2008)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 48:54 minutes | 517 MB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

There is an air of finality on Leonard Cohen’s Dear Heather. Cohen, who turned 70 in September of 2004, offers no air of personal mortality — thank God; may this elegant Canadian bard of the holy and profane live forever. It nonetheless looks back — to teachers, lovers, and friends — and celebrates life spent in the process of actually living it. The album’s bookend tracks provide some evidence: Lord Byron’s bittersweet “Go No More A-Roving,” set to music and sung by Cohen and Sharon Robinson (and dedicated to Cohen’s ailing mentor, Irving Layton), and a beautifully crafted reading of country music’s greatest lost love song, “Tennessee Waltz.” Cohen’s voice is even quieter, almost whispering, nearly sepulchral. The tone of the album is mellow, hushed, nocturnal. Its instrumentation is drenched in the beat nightclub atmospherics of Ten New Songs: trippy, skeletal R&B and pop and Casio keyboard- and beatbox-propelled rhythm tracks are graced by brushed drums, spectral saxophones, and vibes, along with an all but imperceptible acoustic guitar lilting sleepily through it all. But this doesn’t get it, because there’s so much more than this, too. That said, Dear Heather is Cohen’s most upbeat offering. Rather than focus on loss as an end, it looks upon experience as something to be accepted as a portal to wisdom and gratitude. Women permeate these songs both literally and metaphorically. Robinson, who collaborated with Cohen last time, is here, but so is Anjani Thomas. Leanne Ungar also lends production help. Cohen blatantly sums up his amorous life in “Because Of”: “Because of a few songs/Wherein I spoke of their mystery/Women have been exceptionally kind to my old age/They make a secret place/In their busy lives/And they say, ‘Look at me, Leonard/Look at me one last time.'” “The Letters,” written with Robinson, who sings in duet, is a case in point, reflecting on a past love who has been “Reading them again/The ones you didn’t burn/You press them to your lips/My pages of concern…The wounded forms appear/The loss, the full extent/And simple kindness here/The solitude of strength.” “On That Day” is a deeply compassionate meditation on the violence of September 11 where he asks the question: “Did you go crazy/Or did you report/On that day….” It is followed by the spoken poem “A Villanelle for Our Time,” with words by Cohen’s late professor Frank Scott that transform these experiences into hope. “We rise to play a greater part/The lesser loyalties depart/And neither race nor creed remain/From bitter searching of the heart….” On “There for You,” with Robinson, Cohen digs even deeper into the well, telling an old lover that no matter the end result of their love, he was indeed there, had shown up, he was accountable and is grateful. Cohen quotes his own first book, The Spice Box of Earth, to pay tribute to the late poet A.M. Klein. “Tennessee Waltz” is indeed a sad, sad song, but it is given balance in Cohen’s elegant, cheerful delivery. If this is indeed his final offering as a songwriter, it is a fine, decent, and moving way to close this chapter of the book of his life. –Thom Jurek

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Leonard Cohen – Can’t Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 48:37 minutes | 517 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

Leonard Cohen releases Can’t Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour on May 12, 2015. The ten songs of this hypnotic album are Cohen rarities recorded on his recent, celebrated “Old Ideas World Tour.” Remarkably, this is Cohen’s third album release since last September’s Platinum selling Popular Problems which garnered four 2015 JUNO AWARD nominations and won for the coveted ‘Album of the Year’.

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Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah & Songs from His Albums (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:16:01 minutes | 780 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Far from the simplistic view of Leonard Cohen as somewhat of a miserablist, his work is full to the brim with warmth, deep sensuality and wry humour. His songs sit with you like companions, so complete are his stories and rounded his subjects. You can smell their cigarettes, react to their pain and laugh at their stories; the sense of having spent time with Suzanne, or Marianne or any of his muses/characters so complete that you half expect to be washing their coffee cup after they leave.Cohen’s storytelling is as diverse as it is fulsome, taking expansively from life, love, culture and religion, and most successfully when these elements combine. His intoxicating combination of poetry with melody casts spells, creates conversation, paints pictures; and the refrains and the moods he conjures stay with you like the waltz of ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ or ‘Dance Me To The End Of Love’, swirling round and round until you’re giddy. And somewhat more literally, they can stay with you like the 80-plus hymn-like verses he wrote for ‘Hallelujah’, which he crafted over a five-year period – always perfecting, always lingering.

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Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 36:13 minutes | 366 MB | Genre: Rock, Pop
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: AcousticSounds | Artwork: Front cover | © Columbia

Leonard Cohen, the acclaimed composer of “Hallelujah”, continues to astonish his audience. At age 82, he presents his uncompromising and urgent new album, You Want It Darker. Described by early listeners as a “masterpiece” and “classic Cohen,” You Want It Darker, is the latest chapter in Leonard’s significant contribution to contemporary music and thought. These startling songs have been beautifully realized in this his 14th studio album featuring 9 new tracks including the title track, all produced by his son, Adam Cohen. (more…)