omgwtfbbq. :eek: Earlier this morning I was mentally composing a preliminary review for this thread that included the approximate phrase “songs that sounds like they were arranged on the Casio keyboard I bought in 1987, which my kids play on now.”
I mean, slightly creepy, that. But yes, as much as I am already liking this album, the synths are incredibly grating - even though I bought a lot of music in the 80s, I’d forgotten that at one time this represented the state of the art.
Anyway. Ain’t No Cure for Love has been stuck in my head (though I do wonder if he paid The Police for that borrowed riff). Also the title track. And I do dislike “Jazz Police”, more for its lyrics than its sound, but I might have become prejudiced upthread.
Still listening, but thanks again for the suggestions.
This came up a couple of years ago in a thread about great musicians with questionable taste. I said then that Cohen seemed happy to leave a lot of decisions up to his producers, and that it helps to think of the keyboards as ironic – whether they were intended that way or not.
Someone else replied with a YouTube link to a recent live performance showing that Cohen does treat the keyboards with a certain irony. The link in the old thread no longer works, but I believe this is a different clip of the same performance: “Tower of Song” at Glastonbury 2008.
Funny, this thread got me to looking at Cohen albums at Amazon and just for the fun of it bought Field Commander Cohen simply because of the awesome name (and overwhelmingly positive reviews). We’ll see- shux, it was cheap enough.
They are all good. My favourite changes from month to month, year to year but perhaps “New Skin For The Old Ceremony” mainly as it contains the track “Take This Longing” and “The Future” for Light As The Breeze.
This could go on forever.
Been listening to Cohen since 1967, saw him live in Stockholm in '72 in what is probably the most outstanding concert I have attended.
You either love him or hate him, most of my family fall into the former camp and my youngest grandson, son of my youngest daughter, is named Leonard for him.
ETA:
you could do far worse than to sample his music on youtube and find which you prefer, although this will naturally change with familiarity.
Then play it on a proper stereo and submerge yourself in it.
So, interesting you should say that, early in my LC listening it’s feeling like that I’m almost having to decide whether these lyrics are ironic or sincere. Some of them are so clumsy in terms of metaphor that I could either read them as making fun of love songs, or read them as so nakedly sincere that he’s given up trying to be poetical. I’d prefer latter, to tell the truth, and so that’s how I’m reading these songs…but then I’m not sure ironic keyboard choices fit in.
I’d be curious what others think, but for now I’m pretty much digging this.
Agreed. The songs which hit me the hardest out of everything he has ever done are Avalanche, Dress Rehearsal Rag, and Joan of Arc (I’m actually listening to Joan of Arc on repeat right now). Sing Another Song, Boys is also near the top of my favorites. And every other song on the album is great. Having said that, if I was Cohen I wouldn’t have put them on the “best of” either. I feel like that would have detracted from their impact.
I’m Your Man is up there with SoLaH, other than the questionable arrangements. The songs are just so good they shine through anyway.
edit: I never thought the keyboards were supposed to be ironic, nor that he is making fun of love songs.
To be clear, I think the very '80s sounding keyboards were, in the 1980s, an unironic choice Cohen’s producers made. The video clip linked above indicates that Cohen himself did not, by the late 2000s, take them very seriously, but I have no idea what he thought about them at the time. But for people listening to those songs today, I think it works better to take the '80s keyboards as ironic rather than thinking about how dinky they sound.
So this album is pretty fantastic. “Tower of Song” is stuck in my head non-stop. As a bonus I found video of him performing it on what was once a favorite TV show, David Sanborn’s “Night Music,” and that’s a great live version.
Songs of Love and Hate is next up in a week or two.