Leonard Cohen - Can't Forget; A Souvenir of The Grand Tour

Rating 5/5

Review:
A decent live album with Cohen in fine voice

This album doesn't really need a review, of course. Nearly everyone looking at this page will like Leonard Cohen, and many, like me, will have been a devotee through thick and - let's face it - thin for getting on for half a century now, but for what it's worth: Can't Forget is a decent album with some terrific highlights. It's not a classic and I think there's some rather weak stuff on it, but it's worth having, I think. The musicianship is excellent, the "sublime Webb sisters" are just fabulous (why on earth weren't they on Popular Problems?) and Cohen's voice sounds great - a good deal more resonant and less husky and broken than on recent studio albums.

This is another live album (after the excellent Live In Dublin) from the tour of 2012 following the release of the truly great Old Ideas album but there are no songs from Old Ideas here. The recordings are taken from a variety of live shows from all around the world and also several from soundchecks, which are full, properly professional performances. I found that very interesting and Joan Of Arc from the Québec soundcheck is superb; others were good but perhaps lacked some of the frisson of a live performance in front of an audience.

There are two new (or new to me) Cohen songs on the album: Never Gave Nobody Trouble and Got A Little Secret which are both competent but slightly plodding blues tracks - although the excellent lines
"Never gave nobody trouble
But it ain't too late to start"
show that Cohen still has the old twinkle and the ability to put it over in song. There are also a couple of covers here which for me don't add up to much - nice to hear in concert, perhaps, but they wore thin here after a few plays.

Which leaves decent versions of I Can't Forget and a handful of others, of which I think Night Comes On, Joan Of Arc and Light As The Breeze are quite exceptional and make this album worth owning for them alone. Light As The Breeze in particular is very, very sexy (and gives you an idea of why Martha Tilston wrote the excellent Old Tom Cat - on YouTube here)

Overall, for me this is a mixed bag of the excellent, the OK and the slightly plodding. If you just want an album of fine live performances from this tour I'd recommend Live In Dublin before this, but it's Leonard, I love him, and of course I'm going to keep and enjoy this. Recommended with some reservations - but then you've already bought it, haven't you?