The season is too auspicious for the usual wrangling, for my usual topics of government, guns, and money.  In one of my other lives I write reviews for the webzine Minor 7th.  (It might surprise you to learn they are brief.)  Usually, I review indie artists and players who labor at the margins of visibility.

            Today, I would bring another presence to the forefront, one who is both a legend and a player at the margins of visibility.  That man is Leonard Cohen.  His extended tour, which began in 2008 and next spring winds back to Europe, spawned a record, “Live in London.”  It would be my choice for record of the year.

            The tour, it is said, was born out of some measure of desperation, as Cohen’s retirement savings had been looted by his former manager.  Under the direction of his bassist and musical director, Roscoe Beck, Cohen mounted a definitive world tour that reintroduced a good-sized chunk of his oeuvre to new fans as well as his notoriously loyal fan base.  Cohen is 75.  In a practiced stage patter he remarks that his last time out on tour was 15 years ago, when he was 60, “just a kid with a crazy dream.”  In the meantime, in 2001, he released “Ten New Songs,” his best album since “I’m Your Man,” and one of the most important collection of songs of the decade.  Ten years later, he is a road warrior of the most humble and elegant stripe.

            Backed by a top-notch band, some of whom have worked with him since the 1980s, Cohen uses the palette of a contemporary electric band to create atmospheric settings for his songs that allow his signature rasp, his “choir,” and his amazing soloists to shine through.

That Voice

            At 75, nothing is unscathed, least of all the voice.  He sings, “I ache in the places that I used to play.”  At best a talented nonsinger, such minor distinctions never took away from the deep devotions a generation of beautiful losers found in his signature tunes like “Suzanne.”  He himself has described his voice as a croak.  True or not, it never seemed to matter.  Today, years after his last cigarette, the gravel rumbles underneath as he moves to low notes borrowed from the underworld of bass singers.  He half talks his way through some songs, and such a recital conveys all of the meaning and emotion he has ever managed to cram into a quatrain.  Which is to say, a lot; he can cram a near boundless degree of refusal and acceptance into four lines.

            Cohen once said, “I always feel that singing with women’s voices saves my voice, or justifies it in some way.”  Twenty years ago, he formed a writing and recording partnership with singer Sharon Robinson.  Her voice, trained, rich, and warm, is the perfect foil to his low baritone.  The unified blend of their voices  has  become a signature sound in his late career.  Cohen’s later masterpieces, like “In My Secret Life,” are forged in this writing and vocal partnership.  It was a brilliant move on his part to stay in the game.

            On tour, he added the English folk duo, the Webb Sisters to the roster.  Singing with Robinson, they form a perfect choir.  Or as Cohen would say, sublime.  Well less than half his age, they lend pristine edge, rich in sheen and depth, to the blend with Robinson.  The effect is stunning.  In contrast to Cohen’s emotive affects that move from delicate murmur to angry growl, the choir transcends the standard role, becoming far more intrinsic to the proceedings than could be described as “backup vocals.”

            “Live in London” is an astonishing record by an astonishing master of song.   Not to clutter up the conversation with irrelevant and clichéd comparisons to his near-peers, it is fair to say that no one writes like Cohen. (I say “near” because though he broke into the scene during the first wave of folk icons, he was nearly a decade older than many of the others at the time of his debut.)  A master of the minor third, and sometimes partisan of the deepest Flamenco modes, he casts brilliantly simple melodies to deceptively simple music.  Anyone who has ever heard “Hallelujah” can have no doubt of this.

            And then there are the lyrics. Drop-dead gorgeous.  The best of the best rhyme-saying of the more classical, lyrical, dance-of-the-intellect school.  And then they break your heart.  As his friend, the seminal Canadian poet Irving Layton once said, “His whole life is the best argument, his work is the argument.”

The Band

            Cohen’s band on “Live” gives these lyrics a new home, a place to breathe and be breathed.  These songs aren’t going anywhere soon; they are already part of the canon.  But to hear Cohen and Robinson present them is to experience what those who have heard Piaf, Holiday, and Aznavour, must have experienced—the voice of a legend on his or her own turf.

            The band creates that turf.  There is no way to pick favorites; each member is a laudably accomplished player with a formidable resume.  Cohen’s most creative choice of players is the diminutive, middle-aged Javier Mass.  Mas is a Spanish maestro of the bandurria, laud, and archilaud.  These old-world members of the guitar family remember the lute, and are designed to voice the duende of Cohen’s Mediterranean heart.

            By contrast, Bob Metzger is a consummate electric guitarist who roots these arrangements in the now, without apology.  He has played with Cohen for 20 years.  Keyboardist Neil Larsen deploys percussive voices on the Hammond B-3 that recall the voicings of Jimmy Smith, and add much to color the proceedings. Dino Soldo is the sax man, whose solos shine and whose saxophone-like synth wind instrument is used to trigger haunting passages in the mix. And Rafael Gayol, from Mexico, is one sexy drummer.

            Roscoe Beck’s direction yields results that are more or less modern chamber music, crossed with slinky R&B couture, and honed to a single breath—Cohen’s.  Cohen credits them profusely throughout the concert.  In fact, his constant credits following solos constitutes one of the few distractions on the record.  It’s like, alright already, I know ‘em.  But that is merely Cohen’s grace and manners talking.  You cannot doubt his sincerity. 

            In his words:

“It is pleasant to work with people that you know.  But it’s more pleasant to work with people that are gifted.  And it’s most pleasant of all to work with people you know who are gifted.”

The Songs

            This two-disk set featuring 26 tracks relies heavily on “I’m Your Man” for material.  He plays six of the eight songs from that 1988 “comeback” album.  “Ten New Songs” yields “In My Secret Life,” “Boogie Street,” and a pin-drop recitation of “A Thousand Kisses Deep.”  That so much of the material comes from his latter catalogue is a testament to the longevity of his muse.  Some of his most iconic work has arrived long after others embarked on swansong tours.

            His first wave material, songs like “Suzanne,” “So Long, Marianne,” and “Sisters of Mercy,” do not crowd out the later material by any stretch.  To be sure, they are touchstones.  They serve here as reminders that Cohen’s 40-year career spans five decades, that some of us have grown old with him, and when we hear a song like “Suzanne” today, we are listening to an entirely different thread than what we heard then.  And Cohen gives it to you that way.

            Some standouts include the gorgeous “Boogie Street,” the hard-edged “Everybody Knows,” “Who By Fire,” as transformed by Javier Mas, “I’m Your Man” as transformed by Leonard, and “Whither Thou Goest” as transformed by the Webb sisters.  But the true history of this recording is a history of moments, and Cohen and crew deliver them consistently throughout.  The record is populated by too many faves to enumerate.

            This is a record as such in the original sense of the word.  A record of how one of our best troubadours sounds while remaining at the top of his emotional game.  His grace and charm are by now legendary.  It is hard to say, but we won’t have him forever. But, after all, what is music if not a record of a life?

The Occasion           

            Cohen has received a good bit of much-deserved recognition of late.  In 2008 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  This month he was named as a 2010 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award honoree.

            Musician friends of mine from Montreal clued me in to the power of this concert last fall, when, independently, a number of them recounted how this was the best concert they had ever seen.  One who said this has shared the stage with the likes of Emmy Lou Harris and Linda Ronstadt.  So I paid attention and was rewarded in March by an experience that is a delight to share in some part via this recording of a historic tour.  I asked my wife yesterday—“What is your favorite concert ever?”  “Leonard Cohen,” she said, without missing a beat.

            Where it comes from, I don’t know.  Many years ago, Cohen said, “Anybody who writes songs knows that it’s nothing they command.  You are the instrument of something else.”  But he has managed, at some personal cost I would bet, to channel this vein for 50 years.  That is amazing.  And after it all, Cohen would deny us our redundant accolades and instead offer one of his masterful self-deprecating one liners, like, “I only have one chop. But it's a good chop.”  Cohen ultimately comes down to the screwed up sanctity of life, and experience—and he does it with a wink, a nod, and on bended knee.  His prayers are ours.

 Leonard Cohen, Kilmainham, Dublin.14th June 2008

Photo by Michael Stamp

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“There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”

~Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

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