Leonard Cohen

[Daniel Krispin]

I'm just wondering... how many people here have heard of Leonard Cohen? He's a pretty major poet/musician, but all the same, seeing as the majority of people here are American, and he is Canadian, and apparently never really found all too great an audience in the US, I wonder if people in the US have ever really heard about him or like his music. I suppose most people have heard his song Halleluja (seeing as it was in Shrek), but that's a different version of it, and I'm not sure how much that translated back to Cohen himself.

In some ways I suppose he's the Canadian Bob Dylan, though as a poet he predates him, and is in my opinion rather better as both a poet and as a musician. But anyway, I was just curious if he's actually known much in those other parts of the world.

[Mr Bekkler]

I think his voice is more like Louie Armstrong or Tom Waits than Bob Dylan. I know you're not talking about that though.

Cohen is a very cool guy, a super influential artist.

Edit: In my opinion, Hallelujah (maybe without the last H?) is an amazing song, and the best version I've heard was by Rufus Wainwright. At least, the most emotional version.

[Daniel Krispin]

Really? Sounds almost like he's overdoing it. Like he's pouring all the emotion into the melody rather than the words. Leonard Cohen speaks the words with meaning and resonance. You hear him thinking through each word as he speaks as it. Wainright sounds like... the words could be anything. I mean, consider the power of what he's singing...

'There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which is heard
The holy, or the broken, Hallelujah.'

He's a poet, for sure, in the ranks of the best.

I think the problem is... in the covers... in any of the covers... people are enamoured by the emotion of the melody and they miss the subtle power of the words. Most music these days is heavily melodic, and the words are secondary, mostly just an extra instrument. But Cohen was first a poet, and Hallelujah was a poem that took him two years to write. Indeed, in his songs, the melody is secondary, and it is the words, and what they mean - and how much they mean! - that is primary.

His commentary is sublime. Think about 'The Future'. Or the bittersweet words of 'Alexandra Leaving'. These leave a mark even as poems, as words without the song.

Actually, there are a bunch of Canadian artists/songs that I rather like. Cohen is probably the best known (aside from maybe Celine Dion.) But, say, Loreena McKennitt, who is in my opinion the best Celtic-type singer in existence. I don't think she's had a particularly bad song in... essentially forever. For example...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwCEjIbRykY&feature=related

If you have any liking at all for Celtic/traditional type music, I guarantee you'll like that. I would say she is without doubt my favourite female vocalist/songwriter.

Another good artist is Bright Eyes, with a song like If the Brakeman Turns My Way.

People often think Canada has no identity, or if it does it's only that we wish to be 'not American.' But these, Cohen and the rest, present a high pinnacle of achievement and pride, and I think the identity of the North can be set on such artists as these and not be found wanting.

[Mr Bekkler]

So I take it you're Canadian then? I enjoyed your country thoroughly when I was nineteen 

Rufus does get a little out of control with the melody, but I still think it's a very pretty song and he feels it (Honestly when it comes to that song, I'm a sucker, doesn't really matter who's singing, I'm gonna like it unless it's really really badly off key). Cohen's lyrics are phenomenal by the way. As a poet, he's got it. As a musician, he just doesn't strike me the same way.

Unfortunately I feel the same way about Bright Eyes. Connor Oberst is a bit too whiny for my taste, but he had a band for a brief time called Desaparecidos, which has a bit more of a punk feel, and his vocal stylings work much better in this format, methinks. (I just checked their discography and I thought they only had one album called Read Music Speak Spanish but it looks like there's more I haven't heard.)


Canadian music in general is intriguing. Do you like the Arcade Fire? How about the Unicorns? Both interesting and fun in their own way. Arcade Fire is packed with nostalgia and good, clean, safe for parents, old timey fun with a modern indie twist. The Unicorns have broken up and become the much wierder band Islands, when the Unicorns was straight playfulness with songs about crashing the plane on the way to a show on an island, getting attacked and killed by a ghost, and how it's all okay because they were ressurected as actual unicorns. Very odd, but I was really into it for a while.

Edit: They're both from Montreal btw. Unlike the band Of Montreal, which is from Georgia in the US.
"Interesting. No wait, the other thing. Tedious."-Bender

[Romana]

My parents went to see him live in Dublin last year, they said he was amazing.

[Lord J Esq]

I came across Leonard Cohen about three years ago because my then-girlfriend liked to play his music. I quickly realized that I had a taste for it myself—not all of it, of course, but songs like “Everybody Knows,” “Tower of Song,” and “A Thousand Kisses Deep” are Joshalonian gems of the highest caliber. His melodies can be absolutely enchanting, which to me is the most important aspect of a musical work. (The angelic chorus of “Everybody Knows” makes the entire song.) His verbalizations and enunciation are absolutely spectacular. His lyrics, while themselves cynical, are not written by someone who is in a cynical mindset, which I think enriches their intellectual depth. Both the ideas expressed therein the and their metaphorical creativity (“Everybody knows the scene is dead, / But there's gonna be a meter on your bed / That will disclose / What everybody knows.” And: “I said to Hank Williams, 'How lonely does it get?' / Hank Williams hasn't answered yet...”), are a treat to contemplate, and Cohen's tempo is usually relaxed enough to encourage this in time.

His music has inspired people like Judy Collins (“The Blizzard”), which is very important and which I consider to be a net positive in assessing his music. His personal life is fascinating to reconcile with his artistic convulsions and clarions, which to me makes his music more genuine by emanating from personal desire or need rather than any nonmusical reason. Lastly, in his later work (his early work sounds as if it's sung by a completely different person), Cohen has probably the sexiest male voice I have ever heard.

On the whole, he's an outstanding artist and I regard him very favorably.

[Radical_Dreamer]

It has come to my attention that Mr. Cohen is on tour. Josh, he'll be in Seattle later this month:
http://eventful.com/seattle/events/leonard-cohen-/E0-001-020184846-4

[Lord J Esq]

Ah, thank you for that.