Leonard Cohen - Ten New Songs

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Music reviews of Ten New Songs

Music Review: A Dignified Return
Rating: 4 Stars

But now, the year 2002 just born, time's tatters mark Cohen's voice like ink on a white, linen shirt. Even the days of 1988's brilliant "I'm Your Man" are irretrievable, as Cohen's robust baritone is now just a memory haunting his new, ragged croon. When Leonard Cohen is found turning knobs on soundboards and singing "like a vacuum bag with a smoking problem," as my friend Justin once put it, it becomes rather apparent that Cohen's generation is that bottle wine, aged over a period of decades, that just won't turn sour. You pop open the cork and your nose dances with the the fermenting odors of time.

There are such moments here, on Cohen's "Ten New Songs." "Then I came back from where I'd been/My room, it looked the same/But there was nothing left between/The nameless and the name," Cohen sings. He is indeed back in fine form, but the rifts between now and then occasionally slow the album's momentum and conjure memories of what once was.

The old joke is that Cohen's albums come with razor blades, but "Ten New Songs"--in music, at least--reveals an unusually balanced soul. This is not to underplay Cohen's trademark morbidity and cynicism, for most of the lyrics are dour as ever, but perhaps Cohen's knack for matching his music to the pathos of his words is waning. That is not necessarily a bad thing, however. As on Bob Dylan's new "Love and Theft," the apparent irony created between tender music and unrelenting, confessional language is frequently dazzling.

The blissful arrangements of "In My Secret Life," truly one of the best songs of Cohen's career, fades into the kind of authentically moving sorrow and wonder that the music industry offers so rarely these days. Listeners will feel their hearts folding in on themselves like paper fans as Cohen courses gracefully through the fragile soundscapes and concessions of such ethereally tender ballads as "That Don't Make it Junk," "Love Itself," and "You have Loved Enough." While the album as a whole has a flavor distinct from its predecessors, Cohen revisits the haunting terrain of such past masterpieces as "Everybody Knows" or "Famous Blue Raincoat" on the harrowing "By The Rivers Dark," whose seductive cadence makes it easily one of the album's best songs.

Many critics note that this is Cohen's quietest collection. Indeed, some of the tracks, like songs on his last effort, "The Future," are bland and mired in an overwhelmingly austere production. Velvet backing vocals and drumbeats bordering on hip-hop (Boogie Street) dissolve the maundering image upon which Cohen founded a career. The vague delicacy of the music on "Ten new Songs" suggests that Cohen's real interest is in his upcoming, 13th volume of poetry. Songs void of any musical vision such as "Here it Is," "A Thousand Kisses Deep" and "Alexandra Leaving" are left so bare as to be Buddhist chants. A fitting effect, actually, as Cohen Spent the last nine years at Mount Baldy, a Zen monastery outside Los Angeles.

Description of Ten New Songs

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