L.COHEN ~ "First We Take Manhattan"

COHEN On The Road

Original released on CD Legacy 88697768392

(2010, September 14)

Given that Leonard Cohen's international concert tours of the late 2000s were prompted by the fact his former manager made off with his life's savings, only a curmudgeon would blame the man for trying to make the enterprise as profitable as possible. Roughly 14 months after releasing "Live in London", which preserved Cohen's July 2008 performance at London's 02 Arena, the venerable singer and songwriter presented "Songs from the Road", featuring 12 tunes from his 2008 and 2009 concert dates. While "Live in London" captured the feel and flow of a single concert and featured most of Cohen's best-known songs, this set includes bits and pieces from 11 different shows, and while this album isn't exactly a collection of rarities, it does feature a number of lesser-known tunes (such as "Heart with No Companion" and "That Don't Make It Junk") and variant versions of some of his more famous numbers (Cohen juggles the order of the verses on "Suzanne" and adds a new verse to "Bird on a Wire"). While "Live in London" was a richly satisfying souvenir of Cohen's inspired comeback shows, "Songs from the Road" is less impressive in its more modest scale and less cohesive atmosphere. But the album still demonstrates that Cohen is a compelling and absorbing performer who brings his soul into every verse he sings, and his band is nothing less that superb; even when Dino Soldo's sax and Bob Metzger's guitar dip into jazz fusion sleepyland, they give Cohen just the musical support he needs, and the interplay between them and the vocalist is a marvel. "Songs from the Road" seems a bit pale compared to the excellence of "Live in London", but both albums are enough to convince anyone that even at the age of 74, Leonard Cohen remains one of the most vital figures in contemporary music, and his gifts as a performer nearly match his abilities as a writer, no small accomplishment. (Mark Demming in AllMusic)

"It Is Your Flesh That I Wear ..."

Original Released on LP Columbia C30103

(US 1971, March 19)

The weak of heart should fear to tread in the Leonard Cohen songbook. That is especially true of "Songs Of Love And Hate", a sparse and haunting collection of open wounds, lingering contempt, and feverish love that ranks among his most emotionally intense offerings. The line between love and hate has rarely sounded thinner. The songs unfold like short stories or, frequently, small poems, which makes sense given the author's background. Cohen had already written two novels and was a noted poet long before he became a darling of the folk movement and inked a recording contract. His first two releases on Columbia were greeted with wild critical acclaim and mild commercial success. With his flat monotone delivery and richly literate songs, Cohen was seen as Canada's answer to Bob Dylan. But he clearly showed that he was his own man on this release. The artist's dramatic blend of folk and pop is perfectly captured here, starting with the twitchy acoustic guitar melding into a softly swelling string arrangement on the heartbreaking "Avalanche" and continuing through the singer's growling choruses pitted against lovely female harmonies on "Diamonds In The Mine." Love is indeed a battlefield and Cohen appropriately dubbed his backing band "The Army." Still, the album's best moments come when Cohen basically walks alone on such mournful numbers as "Last Year's Man" and "Joan of Arc". (Jim Harrington in “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die”, 2005)

Leonard Cohen é um poeta que usa a canção, ao contrário da vasta maioria dos artistas semelhantes que são cantores que usam a poesia. Como poeta, prefere traçar episódios completos retirados duma longa história fragmentada, que nunca chegará ao fim. Há um herói fatalmente imperfeito e fraco, uma heroína inevitavelmente bela e forte, e um contexto urbano de desonestidade e de solidão. Todas as canções de Cohen são dramáticas, recheadas de imagens poderosas, geralmente “maiores” do que a realidade que ilustram. O amor é mais amoroso, a beleza é mais bela, a tristeza mais triste e o amor físico mais físico. É um universo encantado de desespero e de êxtase, de fé e de desilusão, de amor e de ódio.

"Songs of Love and Hate", lançado em Março de 1971, é uma coleção de canções que são documentos dum desespero quase final. Contém as canções mais deprimentes de toda a história da música popular, debruçadas para o suicídio e sem uma única faísca de esperança. “Dress Rehearsal Rag” é um retrato quase tão angustiante como a angústia que pretende descrever. Grande parte das canções falam do homem falhado que, ao examinar toda a sua vida, não vê nada que não esperanças reveladas como absurdas e depois destruídas. Nem o passado possui o que quer que seja de lindo, nem o presente pode ser mais miserável. Não há futuro. É uma depressão completa, sem luz. Esta escuridão vai ao ponto de Cohen se ridiculizar impiedosamente, imerso numa compaixão doentia de si próprio. Até a canção, esse instrumento branco e amado, sofre o ódio destemperado de Cohen em “Sing Another Song, Boys”.

"Songs of Love and Hate" só tem duas canções de amor – as restantes são de ódio. Curiosamente, uma dessas canções de amor, “Famous Blue Raincoat”, é a sua obra-prima. Duma tristeza resignada quase insuportável, porque não é movida nem por raiva nem por vingança, é a canção mais transparente, saudosa e bela de toda a sua carreira. A outra, “Joan of Arc” (dedicada à cantora Nico), admiravelmente servida pelos arranjos de Paul Buckmaster, volta à religiosidade do album anterior ("Songs From a Room", de 69), aperfeiçoando as imagens cohenianas com um contexto só parentemente histórico – o mártir, possuído duma visão branca, é devorado pelo fogo ancestral da estupidez e da falta de fé.

“Love Calls You By Your Name” não é uma canção de amor – mas uma declaração contra o amor. Está nos antípodas de “So Long Marianne” ou de “Suzanne”. Quando Cohen fala do amor, é sempre num contexto de despedida e de ausência, um pouco como acontece com o Fado. Mas a beleza não se perde, e a memória não se despede – toda a saudade retém o consolo do passado. Neste album, porém, (e é uma mudança de espírito que se irá notando cada vez mais nos LPs posteriores), o amor nada deixa, não valeu a pena, foi só pena – e a sua partida também é só isso: pena, piedade, amargura. A saudade não é a lembrança dum bem passado, mas a consciência amarga dum bem apodrecido e debilitante, a escuridão profunda da desilusão. (in “Pop Music / Rock”, de Philippe Daufouy e Jean-Pierre Saton, 1972)

FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT

It's four in the morning
the end of December
I'm writing you now
to see if you're better
New York was cold
but I like where I'm living
there's music on Clinton Street
all through the evening

I hear that you're building
your little house
deep in the desert
you're living for nothing now
I hope you're keeping
some kind of record

Yes and
Jane came by with a lock of your hair
she said that you gave it to her
that night that you planned to go clear
did you ever go clear?

The last time I saw you
you looked so much older
your famous blue raincoat
was torn at the shoulder
you'd been to the station
to meet every train
you came home alone
without Lili Marlene

You treated my woman
to a flake of your life
and when she came back
she was nobody's wife

Well I see you
there with a rose in your teeth
just one more thin gypsy thief
I see Jane's awake now
she sends her regards

What can I tell you
my brother my killer
what can I possibly say
I guess that Imiss you
I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way

If you ever come by here
for Jane or for me
your enemy is sleeping now
and his woman is free

Thanks for the trouble you took
from her eyes
I thought it was there for good
so I never tried

Jane came by with a lock of your hair
she said that you gave it to her
on the night that you planned to go clear

Sincerely, L Cohen

LEONARD COHEN Live At The Isle Of Wight, 1970

Forty-six summers ago on August 31, 1970, 35-year-old Leonard Cohen was awakened at 2 a.m. from a nap in his trailer and brought onstage to perform with his band at the third annual Isle Of Wight music festival. The audience of 600,000 was in a fiery and frenzied mood, after turning the festival into a political arena, trampling the fences, setting fire to structures and equipment – and stoked by the most incendiary performance of Jimi Hendrix’s career. As Cohen followed Hendrix’s set, onlookers (and fellow festival headliners) Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins and others stood side stage in awe as the Canadian folksinger songwriter-poet-novelist quietly tamed the crowd. Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner, whose footage of the 1970 festival did not begin to see release until 1995, was able to capture Cohen’s performance. This package is available in two formats. The DVD/CD contains the new documentary by Lerner and the full performance on CD. All tracks are previously unreleased (apart from bits of “Suzanne” which were featured in the documentary Message to Love, also by Lerner) (in Amazon)

Memories, Dreams and Reflections

I was just two months shy of my seventeenth birthday at 4 am on August 31 1970 and I knew all the words, I was maybe 50 to 75 yards from the stage just outside the overrun VIP and Press enclosure and Leonard Cohen was about to appear on stage at the Isle of Wight Festival. My older brother Chris was to blame for me being there, for he introduced me to Leonard Cohen, and I had become smitten, I had caught the Leonard Cohen bug big time, which I would be unable to shake off for the rest of my life. I knew all the songs and all about Marianne, Suzanne and Nancy. And I knew "Tonight Will Be Fine", for I had waited 5 days and nights with hardly any sleep, after hitch hiking 250 miles with a friend Johnny Vernon from Manchester in the north of England to be there. I had just slept through most of Jimi Hendrix's set, though disappointed to have missed him, that was unimportant as I had come to see Leonard Cohen, and was slowing moving forward to get as close as possible to the stage. Looking back now it seems like a dream and I have woken up and am watching the DVD of my Dream, compulsively, 3 consecutive times so far and also listened to the whole CD. It's as if time had become dislocated and the warp and woof of reality expanded to include a 40 year Present Moment.

As I watch I am really identifying very intensely with almost spiritual longing with that young man at the beginning of the DVD who was about my age, it was like coming to Bethlehem to see baby Jesus he says, except Leonard Cohen is no 'baby Jesus', and it also felt as much like Babylon as Bethlehem, with Fires, Chaos and Free Love all on display. But it was still like a holy pilgrimage for me.

I wanted so much to connect the 2 time-streams, as I watched Leonard on the DVD, the present with the past, to be there again, with my 17 year old self who was waving matches in the night, through the cold mists of time, trying to signal his presence to his future self. The strangeness of being a mere part, a cell in the huge Beast of Babylon that was the crowd, a Body of 600,000 people. «You Know Who I Am, You've Stared at the Sun», sang the poet and prophet in the middle of the night and we stared at the stage where there was a human star burning with such bright intensity, as we stood in awe in the vast dark, small points of light, our matches in our hands.

The 1970 Leonard Cohen never looked so prickly and real, so unshaven, so raw and human yet so sensitive and spiritual, so powerful and yet so frail. So spaced out yet so centred in the moment. Speaking and singing from the heart with words and songs that communicate with the souls of men. He looked like some suffering Christ like figure that came to tell the world the truth but had just been woken up and did not really want to bother. This was the biggest rock festival in the history of the world and there has not been anything like it since. I was there to see Leonard Cohen in 1970 at the Isle of Wight and feel after viewing the DVD in 2009 that events like these go beyond their stated purpose and moment, reverberate through time and become cracks in the fabric of the world and as Leonard would say, `that's how the light get's in', we enter a Communion with the Higher Powers. «We pray for the angels and then the angels pray for us» to misquote LC. The negative forces on Devastation Hill become insignificant, they had played their part to pump up the intensity and now are just another part of the story, another part of the myth... of how the artist calms the savage beast and opens a spiritual channel for transcendent love to flow and manifest in the world.

Leonard Cohen's words and songs are mined from the very deepest heart and soul. They are like the golden thread from some magical loom, which weave their way through time and remain with us from moment to moment, as we grow older they make our lives richer, more meaningful and bearable. I am so pleased to have had this chance to be transported back 40 years in time and relive my younger days again. It`s been an experience full of unique and extraordinary memories and emotions. And thanks to Leonard Cohen for being a beacon of light in the darkness of the world, truly he transcends past and present, to bring us the timeless truth of the heart. If you want to know what it was like to be at one of the defining moments in musical history... buy this DVD/CD. (Peter Solomon in Amazon)

"Can I ask each one of you to light a match,
so I can see where you are..."

Os fans de LC sabiam há muito da existência destas gravações e destas filmagens, e os mais velhos, como eu, interrogavam-se até se alguma vez haveriam de as ver em vida. Um pouco como estava a acontecer com os “ficheiros secretos” do Neil Young, recentemente também divulgados… A chegada desta obra ao mercado deveria ter sido acompanhada de foguetes, toques de sino, fanfarras, eu sei lá… Mas não, pelo menos por cá. O mercado e os jornalistas que o alimentam andam demasiado entretidos com Michael Jackson e com os milhões que gravitam à volta da sua imagem… Eu não me vou alongar sobre o que se passou nessa mítica noite de 31 de Agosto de 1970, que o livro que acompanha a obra documenta bem. Dir-vos-ei, apenas, que chegaram à Ilha de Wight para os 5 dias de concertos 600.000 pessoas, quando as melhores expectativas dos organizadores não excediam as 200.000. As condições logísticas para acolher tanta gente eram, naturalmente, precárias, e isso lançou uma onda de confusão que se iria alastrar durante todo o evento.

Antes de LC ter subido ao palco já Kris Kristofferson tinha sido obrigado a abandoná-lo por força das garrafas de cerveja que lhe caiam em cima, aparentemente por o som estar a sair em más condições. E durante a actuação de Jimi Hendrix uma parte do palco foi incendiada… A anarquia tinha-se instalado naquele último dia do festival e tudo era possível. No meio de toda essa confusão não se sabia muito bem os horários de cada “performance”, e consta que LC foi acordado às 2 da manhã quando dormia na sua “roulote”. Kristofferson diz que até o chegou a ver em pijama, mas foi já com o seu casaco de safari que Cohen se apresentou em palco, acompanhado por um conjunto de músicos que se auto-nomearam “The Army”, dos quais faziam parte nomes conhecidos como Bob Johson e Charlie Daniels. E o inevitável coro de meninas também já por lá andava, nessa altura…

Cohen apresentou-se despenteado e com a barba de três dias com que o haveríamos de ver, no ano seguinte, na capa de “Songs of Love and Hate”. Adivinha-se o pior mas Cohen, com uma calma impressionante, conseguiu controlar a multidão e quase hipnotizá-la… Começou por contar uma história antiga dos tempos em que ia ao circo com o seu velho pai e, a propósito, pediu a cada um dos presentes que acendesse um fósforo, de modo a que ele os pudesse ver e todos também se pudessem ver melhor, uns aos outros… E arrancou, muito lentamente, com o “Bird on the Wire”. Mas o que faz deste disco uma obra indispensável não é tanto o CD, embora este reúna verdadeiras preciosidades pouco ouvidas “ao vivo” no futuro, já que se baseia nos primeiros e mais intimistas dos seus álbuns. Aqui não há lugar a “First We Take Manhatan”, “I’m Your Man” ou “Tower of Song”’s, que tanto sucesso público fizeram no futuro e de que eu tão pouco gosto …

Em contrapartida, são reveladas pela primeira vez três músicas que hão-de fazer parte de “Songs of Love and Hate” (“Famous Blue Raincoat”, “Diamonds in the Mine” e “Sing Another Song, Boys”), com a particularidade desta última ser, precisamente, a versão “ao vivo” que há-de aparecer nesse terceiro disco. E a versão de “Tonigh Will be Fine” é a que haveremos de encontrar em “Live Songs”, álbum de 1973. Em boa verdade, o que mais me impressiona são as imagens de Cohen: a pureza do seu olhar perdido no vazio, a forma como saboreia e coloca cada palavra das suas canções e dos poemas que declama, o sorriso triste e efémero que lhe perpassa pelo rosto… Não me envergonho de vos dizer que, aqui e além, me vieram lágrimas aos olhos. Não de nostalgia por esses tempos passados… Mas de pura emoção, como um dia me lembro de ter chorado durante uma missa no interior de uma capelinha de St. Wolfgand, nos lagos austríacos, eu que sou profundamente ateu... «God bless Leonard Cohen and his music», diz-nos Judy Collins numa entrevista do filme de Lerner. Não podia ter escolhido melhores palavras. (Luís Mira)

The Isle of Wight may be a haven for PE teachers and community police officers; a safe, branded sanctuary in which the world's distinctly average can "party on down" while listening to Olly Murs. But before little Olly was born, the Isle of Wight Festival used to be one of the best in the world. Jimi Hendrix, Dylan, everyone; they've all played there. The 1970 event say almost 700,000 (mostly ticketless) punters descend on the meagre island which - compared to the fact Glastonbury only holds 135,000 and, at the time the island's own population only reached the 100k mark - gives an idea of the chaos that ensued. By the final day of the fest, following the organisers' attempt to build a fence to keep any newcomers out, multiple riots had erupted around the site. Performers had been treated to a hostile reception for the entire festival: fire broke loose following Jimi Hendrix’s set at midnight, while both Joni Mitchell and Kris Kristofferson had been booed offstage prior to Cohen taking to the stage at around 4am. Having only just been awoken from a slumber in his trailer, Cohen took to the stage and - still starry-eyed - requested the audience to strike matches so he could see them and they could see each other. «I know that you know why you’re lighting them,» he added with an almost philosophical inclination, before kicking into “Bird On The Wire”. After that, the audience were putty to Cohen’s charms, and the incident has been cited to have calmed any animosity for the rest of the duration. (Luke Morgan Britton)

SOME MORE PHOTOS:

The LEONARD COHEN Phostumous Album

Original released on CD Sony 19075978662

(EU 2019, November 22)

When Leonard Cohen sang "I was born like this, I had no choice/I was born with the gift of a golden voice" in his song "Tower of Song" in 1988, most people took it as a self-deprecating joke. No one regarded him as one of the great vocalists of his generation when he released his first albums in the late '60s, given the dour, sometimes flat tone of his delivery. Conventional wisdom has it that his albums succeeded not because of his singing but despite it. But a funny thing happened: as the man grew older and his instrument turned rougher and craggier, he learned to make it more eloquent than before, and he was giving some of his best and most seductive performances in the last decade of his life. In 2016, as Cohen was sitting side by side with mortality, he recorded a final batch of songs, nine of which appeared on his last album, "You Want It Darker", issued just three weeks before his death in November 2016. Three years on, Leonard's son Adam Cohen, a singer and songwriter in his own right, has married nine more vocal performances from his father's last months to backing tracks, and the result is this album "Thanks for the Dance". Several notable artists contributed their talents to this project - among them Jennifer Warnes, Beck, and Leslie Feist - yet it's Leonard Cohen's vocals and lyrics that dominate the spotlight, and with his voice reduced to a dry, throaty whisper, he manages to make some of the most compelling music of his life. In his frailty, Cohen finds a strength that's little short of miraculous, suggesting the musings of a prophet as he speak-sings these messages of darkness and light in the spaces between love and the ultimate finality. Adam Cohen has done a superb job with this material; the arrangements created after the fact sound like they were always meant to serve these songs, and they add a weight and dynamics that never distract from his father's words, some of which ("Puppets" and "It's Torn") recall the themes of his work of the early '70s, but mostly reflect the sweet, bitter wisdom that comes in life's final act. At a bit under 30 minutes, "Thanks for the Dance" might not seem to be a major statement at first glance, but it's a missive that carries startling power, and it's clearly not built from scraps and leftovers, but assembled with a love that's equal to the knowledge Cohen put into it. This adds more documentation to the wholly unexpected and satisfying final act of a truly great songwriter, and it deserves your attention. (Mark Deming in AllMusic)

"Dance Me To The End Of Love" By L. COHEN

Cary Grant Digs Leonard Cohen

One More Cohen

 Original released on CD Columbia 88875014292

(US 2014, September 22)

Leonard Cohen's "Popular Problems" is an uncharacteristically quick follow-up to 2012's "Old Ideas". That record, cut in the aftermath of a multi-year tour, revitalized him as a recording artist. Producer Patrick Leonard (Madonna, Bryan Ferry) serves as co-writer on all but one tune on "Popular Problems". While Cohen's sound has revolved around keyboards since 1988's "I'm Your Man", Leonard gets that the real power in the songwriter's lyrics are best relayed through his own own simple melodies. Everything here - keys, female backing chorus, acoustic instrumentation, etc. - is in their service. As always, Cohen's songs - delivered in his deepest earth rasp - offer protagonists who are ambivalent spiritual seekers, lusty, commitment-phobic lovers, and jaded, untrusting / untrustworthy world citizens. He is them, they are him: strangers hiding in plain sight. Opener "Slow" is paced by a blues vamp from an electric piano and kick drum. "...You want to get there soon  / I want to get there last..." is delivered in a streetwise croak. It's a fine career metaphor, but the hilarious double entendre is self evident, too: "...All your turns are tight / Let me catch my breath / I thought we had all night." "Almost Like the Blues" employs a 12-bar variant exoticized by hand percussion. Cohen juxtaposes visions of global horror with worry over bad reviews; he's culpable because of his vanity. Gospel provides illustration on some of the better songs - there are no weak ones. It's used with razored effect on "Samson in New Orleans" to address the devastation - physical, emotional, spiritual - left by Hurricane Katrina.

Cohen really attempts to sing "Did I Ever Love You." Though it comes out a measured growl, its impact is searing. It shifts from gospel to country jaunt only to circle back, underscoring the bitter, vulnerable truth in the lyric. He observes: "The lemon trees blossom / The almond trees wither," before asking: "Was I ever someone / Who could love you forever?"; he knows the answer. The keyboards and tablas in "Nevermind," a narrative of treachery and global hypocrisy, create skeletal, tense funk. They're appended by Donna De Lory's Arabic chant for peace and safety in contrast to the lyric's scathing accusations. Gospel returns on "Born in Chains," a gentle but gripping first-person account of spiritual seeking with references to Judaism, Christianity, and Cohen's adopted Zen: "...I've heard the soul unfolds / In the chambers of its longing... But all the Ladders of the Night have fallen / Only darkness now / To lift the longing up." On set closer "You Got Me Singing," Cohen, accompanied only by acoustic guitar and violin, lays out hope: "You got me singing even though the world is gone / You got me thinking I'd like to carry on." It's an open-ended, affirmative sendoff. "Popular Problems" reveals that at 80, Cohen not only has plenty left in the tank, but is at his most confident and committed. This is his finest recording since 1995's "The Future". (Thom Jurek in AllMusic)

ONE MORE COHEN'S MASTERPIECE

Original released on CD Columbia CK 92891

(US 2004, October 26)

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 in AllMusc)

A LIVE TRIBUTE TO LEONARD COHEN (2006)

As a soundtrack for Lian Lunson's film "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man", Hal Willner's choices from the two overseas evenings of "Came So Far for Beauty: An Evening of Leonard Cohen Songs" recorded in Brighton and Sydney - the original was in Brooklyn - are exceptionally well done. The rest of this program, however, is utterly fine, beautiful, raw, and immediate. It helps when you've got great material, an arranger like Steven Bernstein, and bands that include Charles Burnham, Michael Blake, Kenny Wollesen, Briggan Krauss, Chris Spedding, Marc Anthony Thompson, Smokey Hormel, Don Falzone, and Maxim Moston. Hal Wilner picked the tunes after producing the Brooklyn show. And when you have Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla - longtime Cohen bandmembers - singing backing vocals on most every tune and taking their own leads as well, the performances move to another level and you have a feast. The multi-generational approach features young guns like Jarvis Cocker, Beth Orton, Teddy Thompson, the Handsome Family, and Martha and Rufus Wainwright along with first-generation Cohen countrywomen the McGarrigle Sisters (one of whom is mother to Rufus and Martha) and middle-years admirers like Nick Cave and Antony, not to mention Battala and Christensen.

It begins with Martha's wonderfully overwrought "Tower of Song." She catches the drama and the wryness in it and just pours it all out. Her brother does an acceptable job of "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" in his trademark nasally wheeze and foppish manner, but his version of "Everybody Knows" comes off with more authority. Nick Cave's lounge lizard sneer on "I'm Your Man" contains all the humor, false confidence, and desperate need of the original. The McGarrigles (with Martha) cover "Winter Lady"; it's light, airy, and gorgeously done, as is Martha's other solo, "The Traitor." Beth Orton is simple, from the gut, and completely raw and effective on "Sisters of Mercy." Listeners get Jarvis Cocker and the Handsome Family doing straight reads of "I Can't Forget" and "Famous Blue Raincoat," respectively - complete with attempts at imitating Cohen's low rumble. Cocker is truly great, while the Handsome Family are more than acceptable. Batalla's "Bird on a Wire" lends the song an entirely new dimension with its slipstream country backdrop and Cajun overtones, courtesy of a fine accordion solo. Cave, Christensen, and Batalla collaborate for a stunningly real midtempo "Suzanne" that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Batalla and Christensen's reading of "Anthem" is tender to the point of heartbreak. Teddy Thompson is, judging by his two recorded outings and his performances of "Tonight Will Be Fine" and "The Future" here, on the way to becoming a truly great singer. But it is Antony's performance of "If It Be Your Will" that is the showstopper here. With Bernstein's arrangement creating a gospel feel, Antony's white-hot vocal expressionism and humility tear the surface off every emotion and word in the song for the purpose of finding what they're really made of. If this one doesn't just blow you away, you have sawdust instead of blood running in your veins. It almost feels like the voice of God coming through the grain of his own.

The final cut, by perennial spotlight hogs U2 - of course, they weren't part of the festival - was the exception and was done in a burlesque club. Their version of "Tower of Song" is the last thing on the program and it belongs there; it's a collaboration between them, Cohen, and Anjani Thomas. Their overblown, over-arranged, and over-produced take on the tune almost steals the author's tough lyrical meaning and buries it under dross instrumental crap that sounds like an outtake from one of their albums - they never could cover other people's material well. Cohen and Anjani sound great on it, though. They keep Bono chained up until the very last verse, where he almost wrecks the tune with his undisciplined vamp on the melody, and the seemingly inauthentic (over)emotional ache in his delivery. Other than this blemish, which keeps "I'm Your Man" from being perfect, this is a fine and fitting tribute to an artist whose gifts are so massive that they cannot even be spoken of adequately. (Thom Jurek in AllMusic)