I should get one thing out of the way before this review gets too long: Leonard Cohen's charm, for me, lies mostly in his words and the way he says them. This is perhaps something he picked up from the poets, or maybe imbedded from his years as a writer, before he ever recorded a note. It's not that his music is easily dismissed, or even that his legacy isn't being closely guarded by dark, genius songwriters hidden somewhere in the corners between Bob Dylan, Nick Drake and probably anyone worth their ink everywhere. Cohen's music is often the coolest part about what never immediately strikes me with his songs. It's just always seemed a little secondary to his words.
It could be that you just don't write phrases like, "May the lights in the Land of Plenty/ Shine on the truth someday," when making catchy tunes is your primary objective. It seems to me Cohen's songs come more from a hope that he'll hit on an answer, or maybe if he's feeling generous, that he would be able translate some of the truth he already understands, more than from any kind of songwriting tradition. I just read he was in a Buddhist monastery for the last few years. His new words could be more prophetic than usual, or maybe just a little morbid, in the most humane way possible. But they're his, and I suppose even the best people are obliged to listen.
Ten New Songs is Cohen's first release of new material since 1992's The Future. He often finds a partner to share the weight (usually on the musical end), and this time he's found Sharon Robinson. Robinson (best known as a session vocalist, and pop songwriter), while certainly leaving her stamp on the proceedings as producer, arranger, performer, and co-writer on every tune, hasn't muffled Cohen's artistic voice any more than his previous collaborators. Of course, her kind of soft rock-- closer to "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Foreigner than I'm comfortable with-- probably isn't going to score many points with the indie crowd, but it's not going to throw off your concentration for very long.
Tunes like "In My Secret Life" and "Alexandra Leaving" actually end up in a far more soulful world because of Robinson than if they had been purely Cohen efforts. These tunes, with Cohen's immensely weighty vocal, lower and possibly darker than ever before, shine with a peculiar optimism even as they betray his resolve with just about every corporeal sensation imaginable. And his passion is still there: "I'd die for the truth/ In my secret life," he sings in the opening track, and where there's a marked distaste for the material world all over the album, he still admits to buying "what I'm told" just like any other conditioned consumer species. Maybe it's indecision, or maybe it's a realization of the hopelessness of running against the grain, but Cohen never stops to consider his own insights or stoop to self-pity. Or, maybe I'm missing his point entirely. He's such a good writer that I wouldn't feel bad for having heard him speak/sing the stuff.
Elsewhere, though Robinson's slick backdrop relentlessly attempts to disguise it, Cohen unleashes harsher demons. In "By the Rivers Dark," he admits the constant threat to spirituality (in whatever form) in the modern world: "And I did forget/ My holy song/ And I had no strength in Babylon." And, per his willingness to let it be, "By the rivers dark/ Where it all goes on/ By the rivers dark in Babylon." There are perhaps correlations I could make to Cohen's recent immersion in Buddhism, and its doctrines of allowing one's self to flow with the river of life and to accept that we simply cannot know what we are not. But the truth is, Cohen has always been as perceptive, and has found his way seemingly by a mix of keen insight and passive discovery.
There are moments where I wonder if he hasn't gone over the edge into helplessness, letting his inner conflicts have their way with him. "Boogie Street" (I know, terrible title, and let me say that Robinson's uber-lame Skin-emax sex scene atmospherics don't exactly do the tune any favors) opens with a joyful reunion with the "Darkened One." "A sip of wine, a cigarette," and Cohen's ready to take a trip to other side, meeting any number of transient pleasures on an avenue where "all the maps of blood and flesh are posted on the door." And the song never brings you back to the safe neighborhoods. Maybe this isn't the kind of thing that goes over well as a conversation piece, and if I had one request, it would be to listen to the album after a shot of something very hard (but very smooth), and just take it in alone.
The album ends with "The Land of Plenty," and suitably, Cohen picks the last song to raise the layered curtain a little. The tenth new song features reminders of forgotten promises ("I know I said I'd meet you... I can't buy it anymore") and faiths long since given up ("For the Christ who has not risen"), but then it lets me down gently. He says, "May the lights in the land of plenty shine on the truth some day." And this is where I remember why I listen to him: Cohen says these words as if he heard them on top of a mountain. Maybe he heard them from some Zen master who doesn't have to live in our world, and must have realized their meaning while meditating, transcended from pain, but soaked in wisdom. But this is not where the words came from; Cohen said them, and he wrote them, and whether it's nice music or just amazing prose, I can only tell you what I heard.
