Search - Leonard Cohen :: Songs of Leonard Cohen

Poet for my generation

J. Riley | 04/09/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Songs of Leonard Cohen is one of the great albums of my youth. The music and lyrics hold up even 40+ years later. Cohen is a true poet."

A Teacher of the Heart

K. Pildner | 04/12/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I don't know if Leonard Cohen is a "genius." The word has been thrown around by music critics and super-fans for so long it's pretty much lost all meaning. What I do know is that this album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, has made a deep and lasting impression on me that only a few other albums could rival.



The melodies are pleasing yet melancholy; the arrangements, for the most part, are austere. Cohen does not betray the listener with mawkish sentimentality designed to manipulate. The overall mood is one of resigned, wistful sadness with a touch of irony.



Like Dylan, to whom he is frequently compared for some reason, he does not have a naturally musical voice, but his singing suits the music that he writes. He sings in a restrained, plaintive, occasionally dry tenor that is at times flat and nasal, but not in such a way that it detracts from enjoying the songs.



Lyrically, the imagery is lush and evocative. The sun "pours down like honey;" love is "graceful and green as a stem;" Marianne "held on to me like I was a crucifix;" a highway is "curling just like smoke" above the shoulder of a stranger... I could go on for a while. Cohen rarely says things directly. He suggests, he doesn't always reveal.



When he is direct, his observations are striking, at times heartbreaking. "You get used to an empty room," he quietly asserts in "Master Song." In "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," he laments: "You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me/It's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea."



The album closes with a sort of drunken, wordless sing-along that is one of the most emotionally raw moments I have ever heard put to music. I can cite the climax of John Lennon's "Mother" from Plastic Ono Band as comparable; nothing else comes to mind.



Recommended if, in terms of mood, you liked: Pink Moon (Nick Drake); Plastic Ono Band (John Lennon); Moon Pix (Cat Power).



(This review refers to the original compact disc release.)

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Poetry put to music

Aaron Stauffer | 05/28/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I think this is some of Leonard's best. It's also his earliest. Most of the songs are put to finger picking, which goes fluidly with his writing."