Leonard Cohen

After almost a decade in exile, Cohen literally came down a mountain to cut his first album since 1992's Democracy. The tempos, melodies and arrangements don't differ much from song to song, but Cohen's calm, elegant precision has always been a constant virtue. "A Thousand Kisses Deep," an ode to beautiful losers, is one of the best things he's ever written.

It's been nine years since we last heard from Leonard Cohen -- an absence that's sent his
rabid cult spiraling into poetically suave withdrawal. Thankfully, the other Man in Black is
back from (somehow worse) depression, artistic inertia and monastic seclusion with Ten
New Songs, a ghostly soundscape populated by the usual cavalcade of beautiful losers.
Only now, with age, the bloody literary machine cuts even deeper; the voice, h... More >

In February, Cohen put out the presciently entitled Field Commander Cohen--recorded live in 1979, when he could still carry a tune if he brought his luggage wheels. It sounded too suave somehow, too sure of its next whiskey bar. But by August, well before history put in an emergency call for voices of doom, the sepulchral croak here seemed spot on. Breaking a nine-year silence, the first four tracks have nothing to do with history except insofar as history is in league with death. But they're as powerful as any he's written--especially "In My Secret Life," about hiding from your conscience in the crevices of your good intentions, and "Here It Is," about the ultimate futility of all hello goodbye. And although he couldn't have known how close to the bone the finale would cut, try these two couplets: "For what's left of our religion/I lift my voice and pray" and "May the lights in The Land of Plenty/Shine on the truth some day." Both beat "God bless America" by a country mile. Well, don't they? (Grade - A-)