CD Odyssey Disc 120: Leonard Cohen

It has been a tough couple of days. Yesterday I discovered that our cat, Othello, has terminal cancer. I'm not really taking it all that well, truth be told.

Amid all of that, I had a hard time giving this album the close listen it deserves, because this is an excellent album, with a lot of memories. Of our two cats, Othello is always the one more willing to come out and hang when the music starts playing. He's the one that prowls around my legs when I'm changing discs in the carousel.

I'm going to really miss that.

...

OK, I'm back from a good cry, and now I'm going to go talk about Leonard Cohen, who's been with me through a lot of tough times himself.

Disc 120 is...Recent Songs

Artist: Leonard Cohen

Year of Release: 1979

How I Came To Know It: I first heard a lot of the music on this album back when I was a kid. CBC did some special called "I Am A Hotel", with the music of Cohen and the dancing of Toller Cranston. I really remember the song "The Gypsy's Wife," which featured a woman in a flowing white dress (and seventies hair) dancing around in a really cheap set, with Cohen singing.

I recall thinking "I Am a Hotel" was pretty lame, but I liked the music. Years later (I think around 1990), when I was an avowed fan of Cohen's music, I recognized the song "The Gypsy's Wife" on this album, put two and two together and had to have it.

How It Stacks Up: I have ten studio albums, and 1 live album of Cohen's. This one is incredible, but Cohen albums make for a tough field. I'll say this one is probably 6th or 7th.

Rating: 4 stars (one thin hair from 5).

"Recent Songs" has the interesting distinction of being the first CD I ever bought (it is actually tied with another Cohen album, "Death of a Ladies' Man"). I saw both albums at a time I didn't know either existed. Problem was, I didn't have a CD player and I couldn't find them on tape (which was the format all my other Cohen was on).

I had a friend, Craig, who I knew owned a CD player, so my plan was to have him tape the albums for me so I could listen to them. While I was waiting around to set up an agreeable time with him I got antsy and wanted to hear the albums, so I spent some of my meagre savings on a ghetto blaster.

This would not be the last time I would forego some necessities in the cause of music, and like most of the other times, I wouldn't go back and decide differently even if I could.

Fortunately I wasn't disappointed, and for many years, "Recent Songs" was my favourite Cohen album.

Stylistically, "Recent Songs" is really the last of Cohen's "plaintiff poet" singing. Five years later, he would release "Various Positions" (reviewed back at Disc 58) which was the beginning of the gravel-voiced sound that fans will know from his more recent work (you know - the last twenty-five years or so).

Musically, this album sees the beginnings of Cohen's musical voice coming out as an accompaniment to his top-tier lyrics. Yes, "Death Of A Ladies' Man" had previously dived into the deep end with full band orchestration, but it had sounded very disjointed. "Recent Songs" shows how Cohen learned how to better blend in instrumentation without losing the emotional resonance of the lyrics.

In particular, I love the moody and sensual violin in both "The Gypsy's Wife" and "The Window" and the mournful western guitar sounds in "The Ballad of the Absent Mare".

This album has so many memories for me. When I first heard it, I had a seriously broken heart, so every song that spoke of romantic failure felt like it was written for me.

Songs about the struggle of the poet appealed to the twenty year old poet in me, as I was studying literature at UVIC at the time. In particular, "I Came So Far For Beauty" which is a song about the artist's sacrifices for his art. Songs like this are like spiritual food for us English Lit types, that dream of being great writers, but haven't quite made it happen (yet).

However, far and away my favourite song when I first heard this record, is still my favourite song today - and one of my top five Leonard Cohen songs of all time: "The Traitor". This is a song about love and lust, and how blurry the lines between them can get. How we can be a traitor even to ourselves in the process - knowing something and refusing to know it at the same time. Sartre calls it "keeping Bad Faith with ourselves." Orwell would call it "Double Think".

Outside of this main theme, these days, the first stanza always makes me think about a girl I briefly dated one summer in Powell River (maybe 1990 or 1991).

"Now the swan it floated on the English River,
the rose of high romance it opened wide;
a suntanned woman yawned me through the summer
the judges watched us from the other side."

She wasn't even suntanned - she was actually very pale and long-limbed, and looked great in a pair of cut off jean shorts. I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember her name, but she yawned me through the summer, so that line makes me think of her. That, and C&C Music Factory - but that's not part of this review.

The next stanza makes me think of something totally different:

"I told my mother, 'Mother, I must leave you.
Preserve my room, but do not shed a tear
Should rumours of a shabby ending reach you,
it was half my fault and half the atmosphere."

This line always reminds me of the emotional trials of university, and that ridiculous notion that your room should be left alone when you're away. For years it was, but one year I went back to visit and it wasn't. I was surprised to find I was completely at ease with this. It had become a guest room; but I had just as surely become a guest.

And on and on it goes, each line of this great song another flower of emotional or temporal memory.

Right now, I'm raw and aware of the importance of every memory along the way. It was fitting I got one of the master evokers of memory.

Best tracks: The Guests, The Window, Came So Far For Beauty, The Traitor, The Gypsy's Wife, Ballad of the Absent Mare