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────┤ Info ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Artist | Leonard Cohen
Title | You Want It Darker
Genre | Folk/Rock Format | Album
Source | CDDA Time | 36:09
Label | Columbia Store | 2016
Catalog | 88985365072 Rip | 2016
Bitrate | 210 kbps Size | 57.33 MB
Freq | 44.1 kHz Encoder | Lame 3.98.4
┌────────┐
────┤ Tracks ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
01. You Want It Darker 4:44
02. Treaty 4:02
03. On The Level 3:27
04. Leaving The Table 3:47
05. If I Didnt Have Your Love 3:36
06. Traveling Light 4:22
07. It Seemed The Better Way 4:22
08. Steer Your Way 4:23
09. String Reprise / Treaty 3:26
┌────────┐
────┤ Notes ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
One of the most fascinating and enigmatic - if not the most successful -
singer/songwriters of the late 60s, Leonard Cohen has retained an audience
across six decades of music-making, interrupted by various digressions into
personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the
mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul
Simon), he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more
firmly than any other musical figure from the '60s who is still working in
the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for
someone who didn't even aspire to a musical career until he was in his
thirties.
Given the subject matter in its title track, Cohen's advanced age (82),
it's tempting to hear "You Want It Darker" as a last album. In advance of
its release, he even told The New Yorker that he was ready to die, only to
walk the comment back later. Whether it is or isn't, "You Want It Darker"
is a hell of a record. Cohen wrote these songs alone and with old friends
Sharon Robinson and Patrick Leonard. Son Adam produced, stepping in while
his father was suffering from a severe back injury that required him to
sing from a medically designed chair. Cohen's sepulchral voice expresses a
wealth of emotion through its grainy rasp. He remains defiant even while
acknowledging failures, regrets, brokenness, and even anger.
Redemption arrives, if at all, through unflinching honesty. The title track
single is introduced by a choir and a foreboding bassline. Its lyric is as
much an indictment of religion as a reflection, personal confession, and
doubt. Cantor Gideon Y. Zelermyer engages with the sacred even as Cohen
wrestles with it. For every, 'Hineni, Hineni/I'm ready my Lord' there is a
counter: 'Magnified and sanctified/Be thy Holy Name/Vilified and
crucified/In the human frame/A million candles burning/For the help that
never came'. In the final verse he asserts: 'If you are the dealer/I want
out of this game', but he's answered by Zelermyer's and the choir's
resolute devotion. "Treaty" recalls the melody of "Anthem" as piano, synth
strings, and chorale highlight the poignancy in the lyric.
Cohen equates past hopes and perceived truths with his guilt: 'We sold
ourselves for love but now we're free/I'm sorry for the ghost I made you
be'. "Leaving The Table" is a bittersweet country waltz where Cohen reveals
things he no longer needs (even if he wishes he did), and underscores
impending exit: 'I don't need a pardon/There's no one left to blame/I'm
leaving the table/I'm out of the game'. The intersection of the blues,
Yiddish folk, and gypsy musics on "Traveling Light" flows through
bouzoukis, mandolins, and drum loops. Their union recalls the haunted
musical qualities on 1984's "Various Positions".
In song after song, Cohen delivers lyric juxtapositions that settle scores
with God, past lovers, and himself. He sounds like a spent Jeremiah
muttering to himself and arguing with his creator in a cave rather than the
biblical one transported to heaven in a fiery chariot of victory. But even
after all this, Cohen can't quite give up the ghost. The tender stringed
reprise of "Treaty" closes the set with a faint - and perhaps desperate -
twinge of hope: 'I wish there was a treaty/between your love and mine'.
Despite his long list of gripes, sins, and losses, Cohen's instinctive
opening to whatever light remains prevails on "You Want It Darker". When
all contradictions are nakedly exposed in truth, all one can do is embrace
them and wish for the best. Brilliant.
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