The first nine tracks are still at five stars...
William E. Adams | Midland, Texas USA | 01/07/2010
(4 out of 5 stars)
"and I am so glad this has been reissued. Twenty years ago I owned it on tape, and wore it out in about six years of frequent play. I loved seven of the nine songs, only feeling that "Manhattan" and "Raincoat" were a notch below the others. Her duet with Cohen on "Joan of Arc" had me in a spell, and along with "Song of Bernadette" which Jennifer co-wrote, were the two tracks I repeated time and time again. But her takes on "Bird on a Wire" and "Coming Back to You" and "Came So Far for Beauty" were also delightful no matter how many times I heard them. "Ain't No Cure for Love" and "A Singer Must Die" pleased me as well. It came out on CD, but I didn't have the budget to buy a copy while that one was still "in print." Now we have this version, in a lovely package and four bonus tracks. I like the addition of "Night Comes On" and "If It Be Your Will" although neither is as good as the seven best offerings on the older album. My problem with this edition is that I am not enthralled with "Ballad of the Runaway Horse" and I think it was a mistake to include the live version of "Joan" without Leonard to help at eight minutes' length. I would have rather heard Ms. Warnes sing three or four other Cohen tunes instead of those two. Still, this is a product that any Cohen fan, Warnes fan, or fan of great singing and songwriting should have on the shelf. There are seemingly dozens of thin-voiced female vocalists earning millions for putting out love or sex songs you can dance to, but whose content can be summed up in a couple of words: "Take me." Jennifer Warnes deserved a lot more money and fame than she received in her career (at least so far) because she performs with clarity, diction, heart, soul and mind. As for Mr. Cohen, he and Bob Dylan and Lennon-McCartney will likely go down in history as the best songwriters the world produced during the past 40 years. I find an Emily Dickinson-quality about Cohen's work: it is most frequently about death or other losses, it is often obscure in meaning, impossible to label as autobiography yet difficult to label as entirely fictional. And very powerful, hard to forget and easy to indulge in as a regular menu item for the literary minded. So four stars for this item as an entire listening experience, but buy it anyway. Its creators, including Ms. Warnes' band mates, deserve to be heard...by everyone."
Famouse blue raincoat
Hyun Kyoo Jeong | 02/05/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I was delight to get this CD from AMAZON.COM .
It was so fantastic sound for deeply voice of Jannifer warns that I was deeply moved by it.
I recommand this CD to you for listening music life.
"