Songs of Leonard Cohen
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend DELUXE ED./DIGIPAK INCL. BONUS TRACKS Product details and pricing info |
|---|
13 Reviews for Songs of Leonard Cohen
- The definitive male singer/songwriter statement bar none
- Leonard Cohen had a somewhat unusual background for a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (he was inducted the day I bought this album). He was from a Jewish family in pre-Quiet Revolution Montreal, and had been a published poet for over a decade before actually recording songs. The result is that his vocals were never trained and Cohen had a reputation as one of rock's first "non-singers".
The effect of being in his thirties, however, was that Cohen was able to take a very different attitude towards the cultural changes that were taking place in the late 1960s - one which unlike Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell placed him well out of the mainstream and meant that only his first two albums ever dented the Top 100 on Billboard. (In Europe, where Cohen was viewed as a romantic, he had such a large following that he managed to chart on a regular basis into the 1990s). Whereas Dylan and Mitchell had a rock orientation in their focus on the steel-string guitar, Cohen generally used a nylon-string guitar and a spartan string orchestra to accompany his vocals. The results can only be described as surprising in their simple beauty, and even as catchy.
The opener "Suzanne" (which I confused for a long time with a song by the Hollies sets the tone with simple, almost classical poetry that has remarkable delicacy to it. Cohen's often-criticised voice was for me not a hard taste to acquire: indeed I found quite easily the reason it fits what he wrote so well. The following track "Master Song" is a mini-epic of the relationship between people that can be described as very conservative (did John J. Miller miss this one?) yet it is so tender that it can make one cry. "Winter Lady", "The Stranger Song" and "Sisters of Mercy" follow on this beauty, but on the second side of the original vinyl Cohen, if anything, take the same formula even further.
"So Long, Marianne" is an epic in the same way as "Master Song" but its moving tale of love surpasses it for darkness as well as for emotion, and then "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" takes one into the slow depths of recognising failure in a way people during the late 1960s had little inclination to do. Cohen, no doubt, tells genuine truth about how many people of the Boom Generation failed to form long-lasting relationships, and the three remaining songs on the second side of "Songs of Leonard Cohen", if more upbeat, show just how wise Cohen seems with hindsight.
All in all, among the male singer/songwriters of the late 1960s and early 1970s no statement more definitive than "Songs of Leonard Cohen" exists. Moondance would be its closest rival, but for all its nature-based mystical passion it is scarcely so wise or compassionate as Cohen's superb debut. The desolate, hushed, mystical beauty of "Songs of Leonard Cohen" was unlike anything else around at the time, yet it stands up with age so well. - 2010-08-09, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Poetry put to music
- 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.
- 2010-05-28, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A Teacher of the Heart
- 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.) - 2010-04-12, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Poet for my generation
- 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.
- 2010-04-09, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Better than Dylan
- This is possibly one of the best albums every made period. Leonard Cohen's best work. This album has everything, amazing lyrics, great guitar pieces, great vocals and everyting just goes together perfectly. Truly amazing for our time and all times.
- 2009-05-09, 1 of 3 people found this review helpful, Rated:
