It happens with an eerie regularity. I hear a song, one of uncanny depth and beauty; something that just reaches down and twists at my heartstrings. Intrigued, I will Google a smattering of half-heard lyrics, seeking to discover a new artist. Instead, I discover a familiar name, Leonard Cohen. It’s a strange consistency — one that has been with me from 15 to 50.
It’s a consistency that caused me to preorder, unheard, his latest CD: “Leonard Cohen – Live in London — July 17th, 2008.” It arrived a few weeks ago.
Let me say, unabashed, this man is a poet, masterful, unmatched, unequaled. But it’s no “big girl’s blouse” type poetry. Rather it’s the soul of a man. It’s raw, and masculine, sensual and sexual; carnal and biblical. If his voice were any deeper it would measure on the Richter scale. Like a rockslide of passion, gravelly and rich, aged and tempered like leather in smoke, dipped in raw emotion, the words of Leonard Cohen caress the ragged edge of love and passion and age and youth.
Now 75, his words have wrapped around my world my entire life. I grew up with his music. At 14, he gave me my first love, a mythical woman named “Suzanne,” and a lifelong longing for Chinese tea and oranges.
I’d wager that you know his words, even if you didn’t know they were his. Jeff Buckley’s 1994 cover of “Hallelujah” (from the studio album “Grace”), for example, has been called one of the top 10 greatest, ever. And Rufus Wainwright brought it to a new generation in his cover for the movie “Shrek.” Like Buckley’s and Wainwright’s, Cohen’s “Hallelujah“ could bring you to tears, except it’s too uplifting. And, I’ll admit I had previously thought that Madeleine Peyroux’s cover of “Dance Me to the End of Love” was unequaled. No more. Cohen’s is beyond description. Cohen is beyond description – a voice of generations, a timeless poet.
This live set combines the ethereal voices of the Webb Sisters (Charley and Hattie) and the sultry sounds of Sharon Robinson with Cohen’s granite, twisting and interweaving like the lyrics themselves. The songs, all written by Cohen, share a common element — a use of language that without warning, twists and turns in unexpected directions, slipping in a slight surprise when you least expect it. With an odd turn of a word, a rhyme you’d never expect, you’re suddenly pulled back from simple reverie in a way that reaches down into your soul and reminds you of life, and love, and of what it means to be human. Hallelujah.
