Customer Reviews

Dear Heather

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Reviewer: Juan Mobili After 2001's Ten New Songs, Cohen returns with a stunning new album, which clearly show than certain artists in their seventies, thankfully, are far from done with honing in their well-crafted wisdom.
Unlike his last album, Sharon Robinson's production allows Cohen's voice to carry the heft of these poems, whether sung or spoken. Actually, where Ten New Songs was more a collaboration than Leonard's solo album, Dear Heather finds her providing great vocals -specially in the The Letters- and more measured in the use of female back-up singers.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the work of a man who has meditated on mortality and found peace and reasons for gratitude, and yet remains unsentimental although more tender about his life. Here, Cohen's poignant and breathtaking poetry achieves a clarity only matched by its courage.
The first two examples which come to mind are Because Of ("Because of a few songs / Wherein I spoke of their mystery, / Women have been / Exceptionally kind / to my old age."), and The Letters (The wounded forms appear: / The loss, the full extent; / And simple kindness here, / The solitude of strength"), which are gorgeous expressions of a man settling accounts, whether thay may need to be apologies or gratitude.
Ultimately, this album shows more hope than somberness. Although Cohen could be called an elder of the dark and brooding song, he's, beneath it all, struck by beauty and loyal to a richer soul. This is an album about a vibrant life bared for examination, and the lesson is love, love above all else.
As he says in Villanelle For Our Time, a Frank Scott poem he musicalized:

"From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.

This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart."

What hogwash the few reviewers have given this album. I own all 11 cds from him and "Dear Heather" is definitely above such lows as 1979's "Recent Songs" or 1977's "Death Of A Ladies Man". Is it as sharp as his first three albums? No. Is it as strong as "I'm Your Man" or "The Future"? No. But it definitely has its place in his canon of work.

Just keep in mind that before all these bands like Radiohead, Keane, Travis, Snow Patrol, etc. There was Leonard Cohen (even before The Cure). Cohen is virtually without peer at 70 years of age. There are some great songs on "Dear Heather" like "Go No More A-Roving", "Because Of", "The Letters", "Morning Glory", "Villanelle For Our Time", "Dear Heather" and "Nightingale". In fact, "The Letters" and "Villanelle" are two of his finest works. "Dear Heather" is a strange, almost Laurie Anderson-like piece of song that shows, even at 70, Cohen is still willing to take musical risks.

"Dear Heather" is an unusual mix of modern engineering with an antiquated musical feel (some of the songs are waltzes) and vintage instrumentation (I believe he uses the mouth harp on two different songs!)

Overall, I was pleased with this album more than 2001's "Ten New Songs". This one has more musical variety. I find it strange that the few Cohen reviews here are very mixed (as if this album was a radical departure or something?!!) Ridiculous. If you are a Cohen fan, you should buy this and add it to your collection.

I do not wish to comment on or intellectualise about Leonard's lyrics. Myriad attempts are constantly made to deconstruct Leonard's work and my penny's worth would be both futile and pointless. I can only say that to me it does not matter what Leonard writes, how arcane, cryptic or esoteric, he communicates to me in some magical way. I may be unable to consciously decipher what it is of which Leonard speaks, but the words evoke a deep emotional response in me. What is this magic that he wroughts?

On to simpler matters, it is nice to hear real instruments edge in again on a Cohen album. And while this is not intended as a reflection on Sharon Robinson or her considerable talent and ability, to my ear Anjani Thomas is a much finer partner to Leonard. Her voice is sweeter, her piano flourishes and her arrangements more ethereal and attractive. Leonard meanwhile fades further into the background, his voice reaching ever more sepulchral depths. Perhaps on the next album he will be audible only to elephants?

Time will tell if the songs are strong enough to cement themselves into our psyches like the ubiquitous entries from the classic Cohen oeuvre. But I personally have been unable to remove Undertow from my head for days now. Anjani's pure and moving lead vocal backed by Leonard's quiet rumble is achingly beautiful.

Dear Heather has faults, for certain. But listening to it I feel that aforementioned Cohen magic wash over me. There is something in Leonard's ragged croak - gentleness, wisdom, I really don't know - that grips me and makes me listen in awe. He speaks to us from a different, more heavenly place. There is the gentle pace, the delicate and original arrangements, the angelic voices of Sharon and (especially) Anjani, the timelessness and serenity of the sound. Perfect in its imperfection, a rare treat in today's programmed world of packaged pop tarts and angry tuneless rappers, I cannot rate Dear Heather less than 5 stars.

Thanks Leonard for a lifetime of great writing...a lifetime of inspired songs.

I have enjoyed Mr Cohen since his first album back in the sixties, so while I am not as old as he is I am old enough to appreciate the true beauty of Dear Heather.

Even what one reviewer calls the "experimental" title track. It's not experimental. At a certain point in our lives something happens to the way we remember. This song is the perfect encapsulation of how the mind doesn't just remember a moment from our younger days, it fixates on it. It fixates on the details. It reaches what is almost desperation in trying to bring that moment back to life. When, towards the end of
the song Dear Heather, Leonard starts spelling out the words, he captures the yearning of the older heart for the younger moment with total accuracy. As always.

Leonard is an artist to be enjoyed in total. Don't just buy Dear Heather, buy every Cohen album you don't already own. And experience a journey like no other in modern music. A journey of discovery, of incredible beauty and disarming honesty.

And when you've heard all the music there's still the poetry and novels. The Energy of Slaves is still one of the most powerful little books, if you can find a copy.

Rumor has it there's the Book Of Longing still to come...so I, like many others, hope we have not heard the last from Leonard.

Even if this is the last time that beautfiul voice breaks into song it doesn't matter. Because if you listen to Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye from his first album it's as eloquent today as it was the day I first heard it. With, as I said at the start, a lifetime of great songs between it and Dear Heather.

Leonard Cohen has never sounded so content. The apocalyptic gloom that endeared songs like "The Future" to the producers of "Natural Born Killers" acquiesce here to what seems an airy and celestial farewell. Where Leonard vowed to "take Manhattan" in 1988 he expresses his gentlest sympathies to that "wounded" city now in "On That Day." The juxtaposition speaks volumes: this is as breezy, subdued and liberated as Cohen has ever sounded. The sexy minimalism of "Tower of Song" or "Alexandra Leaving" comes to fruition here on these spare and restrained compositions, from the heroic, spoken-word "Because Of" to the mere recital of Cohen's "Villanelle" and the tracks on which his grovely voice seems to vanish amid the seduction of female vocals so immaculate as to evoke the sirens of Homer's "Odyssey." More than on any previous record -- even "Ten New Songs" -- Cohen's age has never shown more obviously than it does here. His voice, never a thing of beauty, is especially strained throughout as it attempts to muster the threads of what it's got left. Cohen's reliance on backup singers makes sense, but I prefer the immediacy and conviction of Cohen's own vocal performances on tracks like "Everybody Knows," "Dance Me to the End of Love" or "Avalanche." The disinterest in adornment suggested on "Ten New Songs" is given even more prominence here, as Cohen seems more unwilling than ever to obscure the power of his words. This is less an album than it is a collection of scraps and anecdotes from the final pages of an epic life and career. As such, it strikes me as a necessary work for Cohen's more devoted fans. It is hardly his most "inspired" or musically appealing record, but there is a resignation and finality about it that combines each of these new pieces into a single living epitaph.

After reading the reviews for this album, I was initially concerned due to thier polarized nature. However, on my first "hearing" of this album I was astonished. I felt such strengh in the words, and such imagery envoked by the music - everything from the cold and tortured world of a David Lynch film, to the warm inviting feel of a smoky jazz club. The words reveal so much that those like myself are simply unable to convey - yet understand so vivedly when we hear them. This is truely a masterpiece - transcending genre (as is usually the case with Leonard Cohen), while at the same time remaining an accurate reflection of humanity.

"We'll go no more a-roving/ So late into the night," Leonard Cohen sings on the opening track of his eccentric, challenging new album "Dear Heather." But the underrated Cohen, who turned 70 in September, has continued to release album after album despite a failure to achieve widespread popularity or commercial success. His astonishing lyrical skill and the distinct ideas and themes of his work have remained largely constant within a musical landscape that has grown and changed with the times.

In its sound and content, "Dear Heather" marks the culmination of Cohen's music career. Though the album is inconsistent, with several rough spots of experimentation, its high points are as great as anything Cohen has ever released.

As its affable title indicates, "Dear Heather" is a quiet, musing work. The cynicism of "The Future" (1992) and the bleak incisiveness of "Songs of Love and Hate" (1971) are replaced by introspective contemplation befitting an artist who has just reached his 70th birthday. In that respect, the album has an additional perspective of several decades as well as the weight of serving as a reflection on his own work.

Cohen rose to prominence as a singer-songwriter in the 1960s, after having already published two novels and one anthology of poetry in Canada. In 1967, Cohen moved to the United States to pursue a career as a folksinger. His first album, "The Songs of Leonard Cohen" (1967), was popular among college students but his music never caught on with the mainstream. His work has been characterized by melancholy and lyrics that resemble poetry. In 1996, Cohen was ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk; the album's quiet reflection seems inspired by his religion.

Lyrically, "Dear Heather" is as strong as any album of his long career. Cohen pays tribute to his background as a poet by dedicating several songs to the people that influenced him, such as the Canadian poets Irving Layton and A.M. Klein, and F. R. Scott, once one of Cohen's professors. The album even begins with a tribute to Lord Byron; Cohen adapts the poem "Go No More A-Roving" into a jazzy, relaxed song.

"There For You" and "The Letters" are Cohen at his best, with effective musical instrumentation balancing lyrics that are nostalgic, pained and newly aware of mortality: "Death is old,/ But it's always new./ I freeze with fear/ And I'm there for you," he sings on "There For You." On these tracks, the melancholy quality of Cohen's famously unmusical vocals -- deep, coarse and monotone -- are well complemented by longtime collaborator Sharon Robinson's vocals to create a sublime beauty. Cohen's chant, quieted to a barely audible whisper at times, is all the more haunting on songs such as "On That Day," a response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Cohen has tried, mostly successfully, to incorporate a number of musical styles and elements into his work. Recently, his albums have been characterized by a fusion of country and folk, with the continued use of the synthesizer sounds that were so effective in increasing the scope and magnitude of albums like "The Future."

"Dear Heather," though, overuses synthesizers and solo saxophones, and sometimes ventures into the gray area between quiet, unhurried music and cheap elevator muzak. In particular, on the tracks "Villanelle For Our Time" and "To a Teacher," the music seems almost an afterthought to the admittedly fascinating lyrics. In "Villanelle" the sparse noodling on the synthesizer and horn sounds like half-formed ideas rather than realized music. Nevertheless, Cohen's deep, chanting voice commands attention and seriousness, smoothing these rough experimental passages into one continuous whole.

The title track, however, is a bizarre, unsuccessful experiment that is perhaps the weakest song on the album. A repetitive and almost childish melody plays under Cohen and singer Anjani Thomas's repetitive five-line chant. Cohen tries to achieve a certain effect with the repetition, but the result is difficult to listen to and out of context.

One wishes Cohen would stick to the kind of fascinating, unsettling beauty he proves himself so capable of on two of the last tracks, "Nightingale" and "The Faith" -- the album's masterpiece. Cohen's and Thomas's voices combine to give the song a haunting beauty, and its creative instrumentation and arrangement, which includes an enchanting violin solo, are gorgeous. The lyrics are nearly heartbreaking, filled with regret and pain. "So many graves to fill/ O love, aren't you tired yet?" he sings.

Cohen's words seem to look back upon his magnificent career; should this end up his final album, it will be a worthy coda. But the interesting and provocative "Dear Heather" indicates there is untapped potential that can yet be realized in years to come.

(Originally published in the Yale Daily News, October 29, 2004.)

I've read a number of reviews on this forum, and I realize the problem with Leonard Cohen: he is defined as something different to each one who encounters his body of work (except for one reviewer below, who is CLEARLY reviewing Tom Waits, and doesn't have their gravelly voiced crooners straight).

And to be honest, when I first heard Leonard Cohen, it was in the early nineties when 'Natural Born Killers' was released. The song was 'Waiting For the Miracle,' and I thought to myself 'I did not know Waits had a new album.' After sitting through the end credits, I immediately obtained a copy of 'The Future,' and I found that a lot of Cohen's themes on 'The Future' were akin to Waits' themes on 'Bone Machine': death and the afterlife. But, while Waits gives us the physical (being 'chained to the world'), Cohen gives us the etherial ('you'll see the woman hangning upside down/ her features covered by her fallen gown').

Because my introduction to Leonard Cohen was during his 'more produced' phase, 'Various Positions,' 'I'm Your Man,' 'Cohen Live' felt like the Leonard Cohen that I knew. I was very happy with 'Ten New Songs' as well, because there was a gentleness to it. There seemed to be a return from something. Where had he been for ten years? Was he in the Lost Poet's Cafe the entire time, no longer embracing the Future that he had previously imagined?

'Dear Heather' picks up right where 'Ten New Songs' left off, and in many ways to me it feels like a sequel. There is a branching out, a little more fun, and not as much success. However, I appreciate 'Dear Heather' for it's risks (such as the gently spoken, stumbling jazz tune 'Morning Glory'), and for it's Cohen-esque staples (such as 'Nightingale,' which sounds like a track that could have easily been lifted from 'Recent Songs,' which unlike another reviewer, I did quite like).

Going back and listening to Cohen's other albums, I can say that this isn't THE BEST. This isn't the album that will WOW a new listener. I would suggest a new Cohen listening try out New Skin for the Old Ceremony, and then the Future. I would also encourage everyone to read The Favourite Game, for that proves that Cohen is as wonderful and rich as Salinger and Kerouac.

But for the Cohen listener, I know you have this album already. Take it out, and give it a listen again. It's a love letter to his old friends who have passed; fellow poets; and in a way, to his younger image, that he seems to smile at with the wistful wisdom that comes with...well, being an older Leonard Cohen.

I have to agree with Jason Stein on this one. Reading other people's reviews of this album I didn't expect to like it. I was pleasantly surprised upon hearing it. It is a bit different from LC's past cd's in that there are a couple of songs that he might as well have not written music to and just read as poems (witness 'Morning Glory' as an example). However, there are some stunning and beautiful moments here such as the song 'On That Day' (a reflection on 9/11), the live version of 'Tennessee Waltz', and 'The Letters' (my favorite song on the album).
There is a dark, but reflective mood to this work that should be familiar to LC fans.
I think the artist deserves a lot of credit for trying some different things at age 70 and I heartily recommend this work.

A true poet is someone who you can always learn something new each time you traverse the emotional geography of their work. I feel sorry for the one reviewer who will consign this to the dustbin, for this is very much to learned here.

Simply said, if you like Cohen's songs you can probably find things here that will speak to you and let you learn something from this man's life and journey. If you are looking for a repeat of a specific type of song or music from the man you probably won't find that. As a real artist LC has to go where the muse takes him.

I will note that there is more of a sense of the dark politics of our time in this collection. I will also note that Ray Charles influence is a little more keenly felt than it has been in a long time. And, finally, Ten Songs was more cerebral, but this is closer to the heart, however weird some of these songs may sound.

And I too have been buying cohen's records and before there were records, his books of fiction and poetry. So I guess I'm an old guy now. He still works for me.