| Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas | ||||
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His signature baritone is now, unbelievably, deeper than ever. On the opening “Going Home,” he intones a subterranean self-portrait, backed by pulsing organ and dreamy female chorus, presenting himself, humorously, as “a sportsman and a shepherd…a lazy bastard living in a suit.” “Show Me the Place,” the album’s most religious number, is a hushed spiritual. “Show me the place where my head is bending low,” Cohen asks. “Show me the place where you want your slave to go.” The poet’s preoccupations with sex and death remain. The inside cover features his drawings of a naked woman and a skull. Some numbers, including “Lullaby” and “The Darkness,” will be familiar to anyone who saw his World Tour, where he performed early versions of those songs. The latter, about the spectre of death, is a vibrant blues number that rivals anything from Bob Dylan’s brilliant Time Out of Mind album. “I caught the darkness drinking from your cup,” Cohen drawls. “I said is this contagious? You said ‘Just drink it up.’” Fans of the legendary artist will find the powerful Old Ideas wonderfully thirst quenching. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
One of the world’s most celebrated artists, Leonard Cohen, now 77, is still going strong. After completing 246 concerts in December, 2010, the fedora-wearing, pinstripe-suit clad poet proclaimed himself “invigorated and illuminated” by his World Tour, which had begun three years earlier. Energized and inspired, the iconic Canadian singer-songwriter started recording new songs. Whimsically titled Old Ideas, the resulting album is Leonard’s first new studio recording since 2004’s Dear Heather. It’s also his most overtly spiritual. As Cohen explains: “The album’s ten songs poetically address some of the most profound quandaries of human existence—the relationship to a transcendent being, love, sexuality, loss and death.”
