Customer Reviews

Songs of Leonard Cohen

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When a friend of mine asked me to make a "Best of Leonard Cohen" CD for her, I had to fight the urge to simply copy this album for her and tack a few later gems like "Everybody Knows", "Chelsea Hotel #2", and "Waiting for the Miracle" onto the end. As an English scholar, I firmly believe that this man is the most evocative lyricist modern music has yet produced. This album is not marred by the lackluster filler songs (think of "Jazz Police") that his later albums contain. For whatever reason, he has hit the mark with every song here, and when Leonard Cohen hits the mark it reminds me of why I believe humans create art in the first place. My memories of this album are chiefly associated with hearing it while driving through Indiana in the middle of the night, with flatness all around me, smoking a whole pack of cigarettes in two hours and being unable to find a motel with any vacancy. This album made me think, "Someone else out there knows what I'm feeling and expressing it even better than I could." And I felt more alive and human knowing that there was someone who I could make that emotional connection with. And that is why I think humans create art.

Cohen's most sincere poetry is here, in songs like "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne", and "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye". Somehow, while giving these women names and very specific personalities, Cohen paradoxically makes you feel that he is singing about the woman who just left you, or whom you just left. This is not an album to listen to lightly or at parties, unless they're two-person wine-and-weep parties with your closest friend in the world. It demands your attention in the same way that a whisper in a loud room can make everyone shut up and listen to who's whispering.

I suppose this record is not for everyone, though I've never met anyone in that group. Cynics, fans of simplistic pop lyrics, and those who dissect songs as if they were algorithms may want to look elsewhere. But for anyone who's ever just felt alone, or who has realized too late that all love ends, or anyone young who thinks that no one understands their desire to run off into a field at midnight and just scream because there's so much pain in the world, this is a record to own. Trust me, Leonard feels the same way. And that, somehow, makes it just a little bit easier to take.

I remember first hearing his gravelly voice wafting out of a friend's dorm room late one wintry night, and invited myself in to listen to Cohen's music the last semester before I graduated, and was blown away by the way this guy sang and by what he had to say. Needless to say, I've been listening ever since, for this is a quite unique album, a first effort by Leonard Cohen, the Canadian Jew who is a poet and novelist turned songwriter and folk singer. He known as the "poet of existential despair", a man of soaring visages and terrible nightmares, all put to beautiful and classic melodies. This album is the stuff of legends, with "Suzanne", "Hey, that's No Way To Say Goodbye", "So Long, Marianne", "The Master Song", "The Stranger Song", "Sisters of Mercy", and a number of others. His voice is painful, hypnotic and gravelly, literally oozing with the kind of deep desperation his evocative lyrics blend perfectly with. The guitar work is clear, and immaculately appropriate, and the rest of the arrangements are spare and fit the folk song style he employs.

Others like Judy Collins made hits out of a number of these songs, especially "Suzanne", but no one sings them with the same kind of heart struck originality Cohen delivers. He is still around, by the way, newly emerged from a few years in a Zen monastery as the master of all he touches, and is considered a kind of elder statesman of folk-rock. Quite a mysterious and interesting soul, as they say. Almost everyone has recorded some of his stuff, and there is a tribute album that is a best seller. But this is where the rubber first hit the road, and after you've listened to this a few times, preferably late at night with a bottle of good wine half down your gullets, you'll understand why there's been over thirty years of excitement fuss about Leonard Cohen

In my opinion, Leonard Cohen is one of the greatest singer-songwritters ever and almost everything he has recorded is gold. You really can't go wrong with any of his albums but his 1968 debut "Songs of Leonard Cohen" is a masterpiece. It is one of my favorite albums of all time. Every song is great and there are no fillers. "Songs of Leonard Cohen" is Cohen at his best lyrically, musically, and vocally. The album is overall mysterious, dark, brooding, delicate, beautiful and paints strange and amazing pictures in the mind. I have never read anything about how these songs related to Cohen's life but there is no need because Cohen makes it all so clear and you can see and feel it all happening while listening to the album. I could go on and on some more about how great this album is but I will simply say this is essential, no matter what you listen to, it's just great music.

My first Cohen song was (I think) on Judy Collins lp, Wildflowers, 1967/8. My first lp was Songs from a Room, in the summer of '69. By then I'd managed to read Beautiful Losers, and Favorite Game, and the poetry collection, Spicebox of Earth and basically everything I could find. Since those days I have bought all his albums, and all his poetry collections (particularly fine, Energy of Slaves). With all that, this is the album I come back to most often. This is the most beautiful, compelling album. Yes, the production is maybe off (because of Simon). Yes, his voice isn't as richly used as later. But these songs change you. And that is what art is truly about: changing you in the heart.

Leonard Cohen's first album is a flawless debut, full of powerful and evocative imagery that is at once both poetic and prosaic (indicative of Cohen's talent as both a novelist and a poet). "Suzanne" is a perfect opener, with its haunting, repetitive melody built around the half step between the third and fourth on both the F and Bb chords and its surreal lyrics. "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" is another highlight of the album, a song about human frailty and accepting the inevitable. Cohen is famous for the way he combines the spirit and the flesh in the quest for redemption and he does this beautifully in songs such as "Sisters of Mercy" and "Teachers". Cohen's work is not background music. People might complain about Cohen's voice but I would rather listen to him sing than an opera singer anyday. His untrained, recognizable voice gives the music a more human quality, making it that much easier to relate to. Give this music your full attention and you will be well rewarded.

Orginally released in 1968, The Songs of Leonard Cohen was an album like nothing else comming out at that time. Then again, Leonard Cohen is artist like no one else before him. This was a time when political cynicism was echoed in the lyrics of Country Joe's Super Bird, (an ode to LBJ) and Dylan's Rainy Day Woman tested the airwaves with the refrain "everybody must get stoned".

So what was it about the ultra-cool Canadian with the stoic attitude and monotone voice that was so captivating? To begin with the songs were plaintive, desperate, at times almost suicidal. The deeply religious overtones added to the mystery of the entire experience. In short this collection of poems was so profound, I can remember listening to it almost exclusively for three or four months. Even today, when I play The Songs of Leonard Cohen, I become so engrossed, so enraptured, that I drop everything and have to listen to it in its entirety, without interruption. I honestly can't say that about any other album.

Leonard Cohen had always been nervous about entering the music business. He had been composing songs long before he started his career as a novelist and poet but his dry, croaky voice and gloomy songwriting style always led him to believe there would be little market his work in the Chuck Berry-based world of popular music in the nineteen-fifties and early sixties. That changed when Bob Dylan and the folk-rock movement of the mid-sixties proved that stark production, an unspectacular voice, a sole and somber acoustic guitar and a set of seriously inspired and graceful verses could muster magic and find a fanbase. When July Collins scored a hit with Cohen's song, "Suzanne" in 1966, the writer finally decided to try his hand at recording his debut album.

The first take on Cohen's distinct musical vision was an excellent one. Cohen muses about the gentle beauty of love ("Sisters of Mercy," "Suzanne") and the warm safety of illusion ("The Stranger Song," "Winter Lady") and howls at the desolation of betrayal, loneliness and loss ("Stories of the Street," "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong," "So Long Marianne"). The listener always feels as if he or she is with the artist and his cast of abused and abusive lovers, walking through their gray, wintery world. The utter iciness of Songs of Leonard Cohen can become a bit tedious but the fine story telling, shocking intimacy and levels of lyrical cleverness and elegance virtually unknown to Cohen's folk rock peers ("I loved you in the morning/Our kisses deep and warm/Your hair upon the pillow/Like a sleepy golden storm/Yes many loved before us/I know that we are not new/In city and in forest they smiled like me and you/But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie/Your eyes are soft with sorrow/Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.") nicely save it.

Despite its merit, Songs of Leonard Cohen did not bring Cohen a sizable audience or a significant standing in the folk rock world (There was not yet a sect of that flowery, sentimental world for work as dark as Cohen's). It did, however, provide him a small, cult audience for whom he could comfortably record follow-ups to Songs of Leonard Cohen. But the singer would, to this day, remain a lone wolf. The talent, skill and originality that would always set this shadowy, sullen figure apart and above the typical folky was already in full bloom on his stunning debut.

An astonishingly accomplished debut album, Songs is considered by many to this day to be Leonard Cohen's finest album. With more than a decade's worth of poetry and novel writing under his belt, not to mention having written Suzanne, already a hit by two different people before Cohen himself put it out, it's really no surprise that Leonard made as fine an album as he did here. The album opens beautifully with the aformentioned Suzanne, a song which surely needs no introduction, and it continues on with fine songs throughout. Some of them, such as Master Song and The Stranger Song, astound with their poetry; and some in other ways, such as Teachers with it's breathless delivery and interesting musical backing, and So Long, Marianne with it's beautiful arrangement of acoustic guitar, female backing vocals, and pounding drums. This is an astonishing, touching, heart-breaking, and yet redemptory album. I've seen this album come out on top in polls such as "Best Lyrics On An Album" and things like that, and, I don't hesistate to say, it deserves it. A masterpiece, a must-own.

Leonard Cohen's first album is an amazing set of songs that will forever remain on the shortlist of classic 60's folk albums. Bitter the songs are, but they are injected with such emotion and clear expression it reminds one what it means to be alive. Desolation and want are two of the strongest feelings human beings have. And even though they aren't fun, we all need them to survive. This is what makes the just shy of 40 minutes "The Songs of Leonard Cohen" such a beautiful experience. Even though it doesn't champion human strength (it surely would have weakened it's impact) It is certainly something beautiful to see and hear through his eyes and melodies, even when the pain and suffering is at it's deepest.

And I don't use that work very often when describing albums. In fact, I feel as though the word "masterpiece" is thrown around too often and too loosely by many reviewers, but the word unquestionably applies to Cohen's debut album.

"Suzanne," "So Long Marianne" and "Hey Thats No Way to Say Goodbye" are songs you may or may not know with singalong choruses and beautiful imagery.

"The Master Song," "The Stranger Song," "Stories of the Street" and "One of Us Cannot be Wrong" are intense lyrical works. "Master" and "Stranger" might be the highlights of the album for me. Cohen effortlessly speaks of weird, scary, romantic visions of the isolation and pain of being alone or aloof, with some moments of ecstatic joy thrown in every now and then.

"Teachers" blends a vicious Spanish-based lead guitar with a speedy rhythm riff and a vocal by Cohen that sounds scary and deeply unsettling at times.

For those who haven't heard this, you're missing out on a staggering work of lyrical and musical excellence. Cohen himself could never match this effort, even 30 years later.