Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas (a review)

Leonard Cohen's first studio release in over eight years, Old Ideas, is a throwback album, reawakening the poetic genius of yesteryear, and personifying the familiar and sombre themes of God, desire, misanthropy, despair, love, hope, regret, and betrayal. Not to be misconstrued as a whining lament of his hometown Montreal Canadians, Cohen instead reaches into the depths of his own darkened tower, reflecting on the events that left him nearly penniless in 2005, and back on the road crooning for his supper.

Cohen, now a refined 77-year-old singer/songwriter, has always managed to expertly find the proper juxtaposition between his literature and music. His deep-throated growl is superbly displayed and has never sounded better.

Plagued throughout his life with severe bouts of depression, one can only sense that the past few years have been the worst of times. Cohen's search for enlightenment almost seems too much for him to bare, as he writes in Amen:

Tell me again
When I’ve been to the river
And I’ve taken the edge off my thirst
Tell me again
We’re alone & I’m listening
I’m listening so hard that it hurts
Tell me again
When I’m clean and I’m sober
Tell me again
When I’ve seen through the horror
Tell me again
Tell me over and over
Tell me you want me then
Amen

Cohen is no stranger to questioning his own mortality, and there is a sense after listening to the album a couple of times, that Cohen has not given up on somehow striking a balance in his life.

In the opening track, Going Home, a lighthearted Cohen manages to poke fun at himself, suggesting he is far from being the demigod many portray him to be, but merely, "a sportsman and a shepherd, and a lazy bastard living in a suit."




Going Home

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He will never have the freedom
To refuse

He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

He wants to write a love song
An anthem of forgiving
A manual for living with defeat

A cry above the suffering
A sacrifice recovering
But that isn’t what I want him to complete

I want to make him certain
That he doesn’t have a burden
That he doesn’t need a vision

That he only has permission
To do my instant bidding
That is to SAY what I have told him
To repeat

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit




*Note - Photo of Leonard Cohen by Alex Sturrock.


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