Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Profound and brilliant

I was given an advance copy of You Want It Darker a week or so before its release; it has been a pretty constant companion ever since and I'm still enjoying it immensely.  Old Ideas was a masterpiece in my view, but I wasn't nearly so impressed with Popular Problems and wondered whether Leonard Cohen had another really good album in him.  He had.  This is it.

Aged 82 now, Cohen is looking death squarely in the face throughout this album which has a very valedictory feel to it.  The images of getting out of the game and the flame going out each occur in two separate songs, he sings "I'm angry and I'm tired all the time," and so on, and he's still dealing with the ideas of sin, grace and resignation which have underpinned so much of his work for so long.  I'm pleased to see the old social bite still there among the spirituality in lines like "As he died to make men holy, Let us die to make things cheap," and there's rage against those who use religion as an excuse for hate, killing and oppression, ("I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim"), as well as a wry take on his…er…lively sexual past: “I don’t need a lover; the wretched beast is tame.” 

A large part of what makes Cohen's songs and lyrics so great (and I don't use that word lightly here) is that he often works less by addressing an idea directly and more by allusion and suggestion which, with his genuine poetic ability, allows him sometimes to express something of the inexpressible.  This means that it is often a mistake to try to ascribe too specific a meaning to his lyrics, but it seems to me that throughout much of this album, even while talking about love and relationships, Cohen contemplating his own mortality, and wrestling with his relationship with his God, which has never been an easy one.  Lines like "I'm so sorry for that ghost I made you be, Only one of us was real and that was me," and "A million candles burning for the help that never came" show that's still true; he isn't expecting an easy, loving reconciliation and is possibly expecting nothing at all.  It is met with typical Cohen insight and honesty which permeates the whole album and which I find very powerful and profoundly moving. 

You Want It Darker was produced by Cohen's son Adam, who has done a superb job, I think.  The sound isn't quite what we've become used to; there's rather less of the female backing sound from the likes of the Webb Sisters, for example, and there are strings and choirs (some with a Gospel tinge) in places, and also a good deal of mournful, Klezmer influenced violin (not a plywood one, judging by its lovely sound).  The arrangements and production serve the songs and Cohen's performances beautifully and Leonard himself sort-of-speaks, sort-of-sings much of the time, while managing to imply the melody somehow.  As we all know, he was born with the gift of a golden voice, and it sounds fabulous here.  Of course it's weary and full of cracks, but there's still a magnificent depth to it - a sort of whispered basso profundo - and he puts these songs across like the master he is.  The effect of the whole thing is absolutely mesmerising.

Old Ideas closed with Cohen in Old Tom Cat mode with Different Sides.  You Want It Darker ends very differently with an absolutely stunning reprise of Treaty, superbly arranged for string quartet and with Cohen reciting just a few lines, sounding rather like Last Words, to close the song and the album.  It's a masterstroke, I think; it's a perfect summing up of the mood of the album and leaves me moved and in silence every time I listen to it.

It may be too early to use words like "masterpiece," but I strongly suspect that time will show You Want It Darker to be among Cohen's finest work.  I hope very much that this isn't to be his last album, but if it is, it's a fitting way for one of the very greatest of singer-songwriters to bow out. I think this is a real gem.