AN ALBUM YOU CAN'T GO WRONG WITHbut that applies to all of Leonard Cohen's albums. "I'm your Man" features his perhaps most famous - or certainly one of his most famous - tracks of all time, FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN which is my favorite from this album and has been covered many times, but never has been performed as good as here. This certainly marks a change in Leonard Cohen's music, now not as minimalistic as before, but still as great as ever.
A majestic collection of songs of the highest quality.As an album that you hear when your parents play it and come back to later to realise it's simply amazing, you can't get much better than this. Leonard Cohen is an amazing man, who has created an amazing number of amazing songs over the year. For me, though, this is his essential album. Partly it's because my parents played it over and over when it first came out, and when I was too young to understand music like this for all its depth. I came back to it about five years ago to find that not only does it contain breathtaking songs, but I didn't have to wait a while to gain familiarity with them.
There isn't really time or space to go into detail about why each song is great, but suffice it to say that from the brooding Everybody Knows, to the wonderful 3/4 timed Take This Waltz, to the majestic closer Tower of Song, and everything in between, these are songs for all occasions. It'll take a bit of time - you'll need that familiarity that my parents bred into me before you fully appreciate this - and you'll at times have to look past the rather 80s synthetic instruments and the incredible blip of mediocre that is Jazz Police, but this album is magical.
Cohen's voice, his lyrics, and over all the craftsmanship and scale of his songs make this a truly excellent album. And one I can't rate highly enough!
Cohen: Man For All SeasonsThere really are not words enough to describe the sweep and grandeur of Leonard's 1988 masterpiece. Age cannot wither, nor custom stale its infinite variety. There are many common misperceptions of Mr.Cohen, but none more frustrating to a lifelong fan than that of suicidal, morbid folk-singer. My own personal vision is of the ultimate caberet crooner, the last-dance, last-chance, end-of-the-night performer, dispensing gems of wisdom sometimes with an urbane humour, but always with love and a song in his heart: a mixture of Aznavour, Brel, and Noel Coward, with a little Brecht thrown in for good measure. This album answers perfectly that call, most seductively and gorgeously in LC's reading of Lorca's 'Little Viennese Waltz' (here recast as TAKE THIS WALTZ): "There's a concert hall in Vienna/ Where your mouth had a thousand reviews/ There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking/ They've been sentenced to death by the blues/ Ah! but who is it climbs to your picture/ With a garland of freshly-cut tears?/ Ay! Ay ay ay!/ Take this waltz/ Take this waltz/ Take this waltz, it's been dying for years." Monumental and crumbling, like Vienna itself, evoking grand balls of old, laughter, dancing, now fading with time like the Venice Byron and Shelley discovered. Make no mistake, this is writing of a grand scale, and anyone with a knowledge of Lorca's poetry will know how much fresh material Cohen has rendered from the original. Likewise, on First We Take Manhattan, Everybody Knows, I'm Your Man, Tower Of Song, Cohen is very much relishing his role as bandleader and showman, never once taking himself too seriously, always underpinning every commentary with his much under-appreciated and very jewish wit: "If you want to sleep a moment on the road/ I will steer for you/ If you want to work the street alone/ I'll disappear for you..." Most songs that even try to be funny usually pull up short somewhere. Here, in the title track, Leonard could give Noel coward a run for his money, in that it's hard to know if he's being achingly self-deprecating or deadly serious, such is the play of his word-craft. Similarly, on the oft-quoted "born with the gift of a golden voice" line from TOWER OF SONG, I recall how it raised a mass titter from a packed Albert Hall in 1988, yet I've always been of the opinion that LC wrote that line in earnestness: he is not so much mocking the flat drone of his singing voice, but saying that what emanates from that organ is golden and beautiful and beyond his control. In other words: he couldn't help it if he tried. Just as the most simple of melodies and statements such as AIN'T NO CURE FOR LOVE sprung from a conversation about AIDS he'd had with Jennifer Warnes, he can't help but fill it with the loveliest of details: "I see you on the subway/ I see you on the bus/ I see you lying down with me/ And I see you waking up/ I see your hand/ I see your hair/ Your bracelets and your brush/ And I call to you/ I call to you/ But I don't call soft enough..." Or, in FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN: "Remember me, I used to live for music/ Remember me, I brought your groceries in/ Well, it's Father's Day and everybody's wounded..." Could I also be the first to defend the inclusion of JAZZ POLICE, here, replete with dry, jewish, masculine humour: "Let me be somebody I admire/ Let me be that muscle down the street/ Stick another turtle on the fire/ Guys like me are mad for turtle meat..." It's rare indeed, to find such a wealth of poetry anywhere, let alone an album of popular song. As for those who abhor the sub-eighties production going on here, I have to say I've never found it dating as it only enhances and underpins the naked, honest phrasing of Mr.Cohen. For my money, this ranks as highly as SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE and only loses out to THE SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN because that album is chock-full of bonafide classics like SUZANNE and SO LONG, MARIANNE and others just too lovely for words.....
Lorca and moreThe singalong melodies of Manhattan, Aint No Cure and Everybody Knows contrast well with Cohen's trademark preoccupation with romantic despair and judeo-christian imagery as in: "It's written in the scriptures, it's written there in blood ..." or "everybody's got this broken feeling/Like their father or their dog just died."
John Bilezikjian's oud adds a special dimension to Everybody Knows. The elegant Take This Waltz is a lilting song that brings the Vienna of Federico Garcia Lorca to life in a series of vivid images driven by a fervent longing for the beloved. The brilliant arrangement is enhanced by Raffi Hakopian's violin and the voice of Jennifer Warnes.
The wistful I Can't Forget has been covered by The Pixies, while Tower of Song has been interpreted by artists as diverse as Marianne Faithfull, Robert Forster and Nick Cave and lent its title to the 1995 tribute album. I'm not crazy about either the experimental Jazz Police or the title track, but I am evidently wrong since I'm Your Man has been covered by Elton John and Bill Pritchard.
Be carefulBe careful with this album, played too often and Cohen will steal your soul. And you'll want to be stolen.
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