The organ instantly lends this classic-sounding Cohen love song a celestial feeling, another instance of him blurring the lines between romance and religion. "I don't need a lover, so blow out the flame." A languid, smoky ballad, it deals with one of the most dominant themes on the album: not just letting go, but blissfully doing so after a life of living to the fullest. "I'm leaving the table, I'm out of the game," Cohen declares at the beginning of this song over a nylon string guitar reminiscent of his '60s and '70s output. A man like me don't like to see temptation caving in." "I was fighting with temptation, but I didn't want to win. On this track, co-written with longtime collaborator Sharon Robinson, Cohen deals with his lifelong reputation of being a ladies' man, and how it's tough to break with character after all these years.
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In another moment, we witness the rare occasion where his voice almost breaks, singing, "You were my ground, my safe and sound," the vulnerability on full display as he lays the groundwork for an eventual redemption.
"I've seen you change the water into wine, I've seen you change it back to water, too," he sings before tying that with the image of being at the dinner table.
With Cohen, who mixes romantic expressions with religious imagery throughout, it's likely both. Subdued strings accompany Cohen as he reflects on what could either be a long lost love or the search for an epiphany. "Treaty" took Cohen seven years to complete. This is a wide-ranging exploration of the religious mind, from those who use it to justify war - "Didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim" - to Cohen himself, who invokes God in the chorus using a traditional utterance from the Torah, "hineni, hineni," translated from Hebrew to "here I am." Cohen finishes the thought with a declaration, "I'm ready my lord," punctuated by chants from Montreal's Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Choir, the very synagogue of Cohen's youth, used here to reflect on the end.Ī signature Cohen sound, mixing both the sacred and the profane over a melody that is instantly recognizable as his: simple yet undeniably unforgettable. Even in darkness - it's how the light gets in.
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After all, there is a crack in everything, as Cohen would say. Negativity ruptures under Cohen's hope, his humour, his elation and his genuine curiosity. It's all meant to service Cohen's lyrics and delivery, his voice rolling in like a distant thunder, deeper, both physically and spiritually, than ever before.Īnd yet, for all the darkness that permeates the album, there is absolutely no sense of dread. The arrangements are sparing but rich, from the elegant coos of a choir to haunting string progressions, or sometimes just a lonely guitar or electric piano with a barely there drumbeat. Throughout the nine songs on You Want it Darker, which was produced by his son, Adam Cohen, and composed with longtime collaborator Patrick Leonard, Cohen reflects on the same big questions to which he's devoted his life, but with the advantage of someone who can sense the end: "I'm travelling light, it's au revoir, my once so bright, my fallen star," he sings on "Travelling Light," a song that finds the joy in letting go. As the ailing 82-year-old accepts that, despite his best efforts, some questions will never be answered, we get to witness Cohen at his most vulnerable and vibrant. It's that signature straightforward, everyman approach to dealing with life's biggest questions - love, death and faith, sometimes all at the same time - that is on full display on You Want it Darker, one of the most inspired and poignant albums of his venerated career. "I am ready to die," he confessed in a recent New Yorker profile, Cohen never being the type of man to equivocate on such matters. The spectre of death looms large over Cohen's 14th album, and nowhere is this more apparent than here, from the ominous chants of Montreal's Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Choir to Cohen's own lyrical acceptance of his mortal limitations.
21), his trademark baritone mining the depths of his range, his lyrics the depths of his soul. "I'm ready my lord," crackles Leonard Cohen on the title track to You Want it Darker (available Oct.
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