Ten New Songs

Review Summary: Worth the effort of several listenings

Review:

This one took quite a few listenings before I began to realise the strength of some of the lyrics and the emotional power of just about every track.
Some don't like the strong presence of female vocals - personally I love this especially on 'Alexandra Leaving' and 'Here it is'.
I love this album and think others who know Cohen's work will too - and hopefully, many others who don't know his work will hereby get to know it.

Review Summary: This Review Don't Make It Junk

Review:

What I most like about this Leonard Cohen album is the fact that so many people coming fresh to the works of this great songwriter seem to love it wholeheartedly. For me, it never felt like an official Cohen release in the way, say, that DEAR HEATHER undoubtedly does. My feeling is that too many of the arrangements belong more to Sharon Robinson than dear old Lenny, and the album runs out of steam after ALEXANDRA LEAVING. LAND OF PLENTY, i.e., is perhaps the only track of Cohen's besides ON THAT DAY, from DEAR HEATHER, whose lyrics actually make me wince a little bit. And it makes me feel sad to say that about someone I consider the finest poet of the last fifty years, who has always cared far more about quality control than Bob Dylan, i.e. But, everyone has bum days, and the moments of brilliance in songs such as IN MY SECRET LIFE, A THOUSAND KISSES DEEP, LOVE ITSELF, BY THE RIVERS DARK, and the aforementioned majestic ALEXANDRA LEAVING, far outweigh the presence of any faults perceived, and it's not that I'm even saying there are any real duffers contained here. BOOGIE STREET sounds uncharacteristic, and would probably have been better served had it been recorded by Robinson herself, with Cohen guest- vocalising. THOUSAND KISSES dates back at least to the time of THE FUTURE as an idea for a song, and SECRET LIFE further back still - to an interview recorded during the release of I'M YOUR MAN. Not that that's anything new in relation to Cohen: on DEAR HEATHER's TO A TEACHER he serves up some backing to a poem contained in his '61 volume THE SPICE-BOX OF EARTH, a period that predates the writing of SUZANNE. It conveys an impression, to me, of a writer (a) either coming to terms with the past, or (b) running out of fresh ideas. Contrast this with the songs on I'M YOUR MAN and THE FUTURE and you'll get an idea of what I mean: a lot of the humour and self-deprecation we've come to know and love seems sadly absent here, barring the vintage of THAT DON'T MAKE IT JUNK. I get the same feeling from DEAR HEATHER also, which to me is an album of footnotes, but one nonetheless that points back towards the beat, down-at-heel, acoustic jew's-harpist we all know and some of us love. Lastly, I feel I have to make the point that this is the second Cohen album containing the word NEW in its title which again proves to be only partly true....

Review Summary: Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant

Review:

This CD is brilliant - if you like Leonard Cohen, you MUST buy it ! !

Review Summary: Leonard Cohen is guest on his own record..?

Review:

Having been sat around at home feeling ill all of today, I thought, what better time to review the Leonard Cohen album?

Popular conception has it that if you're having a bad day you listen to Leonard Cohen and then realise that nobody can have it quite as bad as him. There's a chink in everything, and even in the darkness from which he crafts his songs, some sunlight gets in. The dark humour and bare, acoustic, naked style seemed to work in his favour.

In the past ten years since he made "The Future" it seems as Leonard has finally lost his talent. Shame. But then again, looking at the production credits on the CD it looks as if all he did was write ten sets of lyrics and fax a vocal in from a rooftop monastery.

He hasn't put his name to an album this awful since 1977's Spector-produced semi-Motown "Death Of A Lady's Man" where every ounce of his talent was saturated in hopelessly inappropriate strings.

There are good points to the record - Cohen's astonishing and powerful voice, which was always previously complemented by the music. And the lyrics. Cohen's lyrics achieve a style and potency that nobody comes even close to - semi-biblical tales of love lost and longing that reverberate deep into your heart. Nobody writes lyrics as good as Lenny. "In My Secret Life", a dissection of the alternate universe where he lives a fantasy world with a departed lover, is as accurate a tale of heartbreak as anything recorded by any human since the invention of the gramophone.

However, the impression I get is that someone has persuaded Leonard to make this CD with the minimum of effort on his part, and that's where it fails. Someone called Sharon Robinson (who?) produced and wrote all the below par,cheaply recorded sub-demo mogadon-paced backing music, contributed vocals to every song, and generally ran the show. It sounds like a bunch of half-assed, unfinished demos with cheap production values and bad mixing. Unfortunately, it sounds as if the backing music was xeroxed in from a Speak'N'Spell in 1981.

The world needs another Leonard Cohen record - artists of his talent and ability are rare. Unfortunately this isn't it. He's a guest vocalist on a Sharon Robinson album in all but name, and that's a waste. Don't pay money for this, I didn't.

Review Summary: His very best album

Review:

Ten new songs is Leonard Cohen at his peak. I have in my collection hundreds and hundreds of albums by all sorts of bands and people; but if I could only save one in a fire...it would be this one. Enough said I think.