Customer Reviews

Songs of Leonard Cohen

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In the late 1960s, Leonard Cohen was one of those fabled individuals of whom most serious music lovers had heard but who had not actually been much heard except through the voices of better-known singers who tirelessly promoted his songs. Over the years, Cohen became better known and has since become a cult hero in the world of those who like their music decidedly deep and decidedly dark.
I first became aware of Cohen back in the 1960s when I heard Judy Collins' haunting rendition of Suzanne. I liked that and I liked some other Cohen covers I later heard but never got around to actually buying a Leonard Cohen recording until some ten years ago. Since that time, I have gradually added to my collection of his music but did not acquire his first album until it was recently remastered. And what a piece of work it is!
Many have compared Leonard Cohen to Bob Dylan because both are masters of the English language and both are masters of poetic imagery. And like Dylan, Cohen has a peculiar talent for the blending of the sacred and the profane. You might even say that Leonard Cohen is Canada's answer to Bob Dylan. The last picture of Cohen in the attractive booklet that accompanies the CD even looks like Dylan does today! Despite the flattering comparison, however, Cohen is absolutely an original.
I like the dark, the brooding, and the bittersweet when eloquently and intelligently expressed, so its almost only natural that I am a confirmed Leonard Cohen fan. Every song on this CD, including the bonus cuts, is a winner. Suzanne is obviously the most famous cut closely followed perhaps by Sisters of Mercy. Good as they are they are not my favorites. Mine are Master Song, The Stranger Song, Stories of the Street, Store Room, and finally Teachers which is hugely evocative of the pre-commercial works of fellow Canadian Gordon Lightfoot.
On the Songs of Leonard Cohen, the listener is presented with an astounding body of work that, to paraphrase the updated liner notes, assures Cohen a place in the pantheon of great twentieth century songwriter/poets. There are precious few artists whose debuts are so auspicious as this. This is a recording that deserves a place in the music library of every serious music lover. Get it while you still can.

Cohen's timeless debut has been enhanced by the addition of 2 extra tracks. The lilting poetry of Suzanne lures the listener into his world of romantic despair while introducing the essence of his sound: a deep monotone framed by sublime female backing vocals over simple but engaging melodies.

Master Song, Winter Lady and Stranger Song reinforce the desolate landscape although the melodies are less immediate. Cohen's genius shines brightly on the immortal Sisters Of Mercy, a strange mixture of the spiritual and the sensual that must be one of the most beautiful musical poems in the English language.

This delicate gem is followed by the powerful and evocative So Long Marianne and the understated Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye, both masterpieces of words, melody and arrangement - the female vocals on Goodbye is especially impressive.

Stories of the Street appears as a poem in one of Cohen's 1960s poetry books: Selected Poems 1956-1968 and deals with a visit to Havana during of just after the revolution. Interesting fact: The line "some girls wander by mistake" from Teachers was later used as an album title by the goth band Sisters Of Mercy: Some Girls Wander By Mistake

One Us Cannot Be Wrong addresses the beloved in a series of strange images before moving on to melodic whistling and ending with bitter shouted la la lahs. For those interested in other artists' take on Cohen: Suzanne has been beautifully covered by inter alia Judy Collins Sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy and Geoffrey Oryema: I'm Your Fan, while Sting and the Chieftains' celtic version of Sisters Of Mercy is available on the Tower of Song: The Songs of Leonard Cohen tribute album.

On the I'm Your Fan tribute there are interesting interpretations of Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye by Ian McCulloch, Stories Of The Street by That Petrol Emotion and So Long Marianne by James.

This reissue booklet includes liner notes by Anthony DeCurtis, three black & white photographs of LC and two full-color paintings by the artist. Both extra tracks were originally produced by John Hammond and for reissue by Bruce Dickinson. The second, Blessed Is The Memory, is the more immediately appealing with its lovely organ flourishes.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

Songs from a Room

Flowers for Hitler

This was Leonard Cohen's first album, and it's an amazing album. It's filled with some of his best songs ever, songs that sound new everytime you listen to him. It starts with one of his signature songs, Suzanne. Surprisingly, it's not about a lost love or a current love, but a woman of impeccable taste and hospitality. I especially love The Stranger Song, which grows more brooding and profound every time I listen to it. Sisters of Mercy, So Long, Marianne, and Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye are three other songs that are truly endearing. This is the beginning of the amazing journey for Cohen, as most of his work has been surprisingly consistent and always worth listening to. Many times when an artist has a great debut, he burns out afterwards. Not Leonard. He's aging most gracefully.

An interesting note to cinema buffs. Many of these songs are featured in Robert Altman's masterful McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and the song Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye is featured in Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana.

Essential listening from one of Canada's greatest men.

7 reviews?!? I'd like to think the lack of reviews for this album merely indicates the difficulty of expressing in words the profound impact of these songs, a task perhaps only fit for the wordsmith Mr. Cohen himself. This album touches a sensitive nerve with me every time I listen to it, and it's one of the few that can reduce me to tears again and again. Not only does it strike a chord with me again and again, but it somehow manages to escalate in impact and profundity with each listen as the mysteries contained within reveal themselves gradually. Perhaps not everyone will feel this way, but there's something about Cohen's ability to convey very complex feelings and human conundrums through abstract yet direct poetics, and sparse but exacting musical backing which cuts me to the quick.

While Cohen has had a consistently strong career, always creating excellent material of a standard other artists would be lucky to even come close to, this first album is arguably his strongest. Each album is strong in its own way, and comparing them misses the point, but this album manages to move me more than any of the others (Songs of Love and Hate and Songs From a Room come close). This may just be personal bias or preference, this being my introduction to Mr. Cohen, and having heard it at a time and place that left me open to its devastating impact. But I challenge anyone to listen with an open mind to "One of us cannot be wrong" and defy them to keep from shivering or all out weeping. Listen to "Sisters of mercy" and you can't deny being buoyed by its sense of sensual deification and grace. Listen to "The stranger song" and try not to be intrigued by the mysteries like "...a highway, curling just like smoke above his shoulder." I could go on, but again, there's only so much one can say about this incredible album. It would take the words of Mr. Cohen himself to convey the emotional impact these songs can have on an interested mind and an open heart.

Just a word about the remastered version: Sound quality is top notch and a marked improvement over the old CD version, with the sparse arrangements coming forward, filling and leaving space perfectly. The bonus tracks are a very nice addition and a pleasure to hear, though they are somewhat less "necessary" than any of the original songs. Either way, a great buy and a very worthwhile replacement of the old columbia CD.

I don't know if Leonard Cohen is a "genius." The word has been thrown around by music critics and super-fans for so long it's pretty much lost all meaning. What I do know is that this album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, has made a deep and lasting impression on me that only a few other albums could rival.

The melodies are pleasing yet melancholy; the arrangements, for the most part, are austere. Cohen does not betray the listener with mawkish sentimentality designed to manipulate. The overall mood is one of resigned, wistful sadness with a touch of irony.

Like Dylan, to whom he is frequently compared for some reason, he does not have a naturally musical voice, but his singing suits the music that he writes. He sings in a restrained, plaintive, occasionally dry tenor that is at times flat and nasal, but not in such a way that it detracts from enjoying the songs.

Lyrically, the imagery is lush and evocative. The sun "pours down like honey;" love is "graceful and green as a stem;" Marianne "held on to me like I was a crucifix;" a highway is "curling just like smoke" above the shoulder of a stranger... I could go on for a while. Cohen rarely says things directly. He suggests, he doesn't always reveal.

When he is direct, his observations are striking, at times heartbreaking. "You get used to an empty room," he quietly asserts in "Master Song." In "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," he laments: "You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me/It's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea."

The album closes with a sort of drunken, wordless sing-along that is one of the most emotionally raw moments I have ever heard put to music. I can cite the climax of John Lennon's "Mother" from Plastic Ono Band as comparable; nothing else comes to mind.

Recommended if, in terms of mood, you liked: Pink Moon (Nick Drake); Plastic Ono Band (John Lennon); Moon Pix (Cat Power).

(This review refers to the original compact disc release.)

Leonard Cohen had a somewhat unusual background for a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (he was inducted the day I bought this album). He was from a Jewish family in pre-Quiet Revolution Montreal, and had been a published poet for over a decade before actually recording songs. The result is that his vocals were never trained and Cohen had a reputation as one of rock's first "non-singers".

The effect of being in his thirties, however, was that Cohen was able to take a very different attitude towards the cultural changes that were taking place in the late 1960s - one which unlike Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell placed him well out of the mainstream and meant that only his first two albums ever dented the Top 100 on Billboard. (In Europe, where Cohen was viewed as a romantic, he had such a large following that he managed to chart on a regular basis into the 1990s). Whereas Dylan and Mitchell had a rock orientation in their focus on the steel-string guitar, Cohen generally used a nylon-string guitar and a spartan string orchestra to accompany his vocals. The results can only be described as surprising in their simple beauty, and even as catchy.

The opener "Suzanne" (which I confused for a long time with a song by the Hollies sets the tone with simple, almost classical poetry that has remarkable delicacy to it. Cohen's often-criticised voice was for me not a hard taste to acquire: indeed I found quite easily the reason it fits what he wrote so well. The following track "Master Song" is a mini-epic of the relationship between people that can be described as very conservative (did John J. Miller miss this one?) yet it is so tender that it can make one cry. "Winter Lady", "The Stranger Song" and "Sisters of Mercy" follow on this beauty, but on the second side of the original vinyl Cohen, if anything, take the same formula even further.

"So Long, Marianne" is an epic in the same way as "Master Song" but its moving tale of love surpasses it for darkness as well as for emotion, and then "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" takes one into the slow depths of recognising failure in a way people during the late 1960s had little inclination to do. Cohen, no doubt, tells genuine truth about how many people of the Boom Generation failed to form long-lasting relationships, and the three remaining songs on the second side of "Songs of Leonard Cohen", if more upbeat, show just how wise Cohen seems with hindsight.

All in all, among the male singer/songwriters of the late 1960s and early 1970s no statement more definitive than "Songs of Leonard Cohen" exists. Moondance would be its closest rival, but for all its nature-based mystical passion it is scarcely so wise or compassionate as Cohen's superb debut. The desolate, hushed, mystical beauty of "Songs of Leonard Cohen" was unlike anything else around at the time, yet it stands up with age so well.

I have never figured out why I love this album so much. It touches my soul in a strange, satisfying way. If I am feeling down, I listen to this album and it seems to express my feelings. I always feel better afterward. Magical.

This album was responsible for my learning arpeggio's on my guitar. I like poetry and Leonard Cohen's words and music, though not always understood somehow evoked emotions that inspired me to learn and play his songs. In trying to understand the words he wrote I found meanings in the songs that were my own, probably the basis of all good poetry. The music itself uses a lot of minor keys which emphsises sadness, reflections on those things lost, pain and the whole range of emotions associated with love. Still an easy listening cd.

The songs on this cd are classic Cohen. If you like Leonard Cohen, you will love this cd. Turn down the lights, turn the volume up, sit down and just contemplate his voice and words. An awesome poet, songwriter, singer.

The Songs of Leonard Cohen: All the songs on this CD were written by Leonard Cohen and this release became very influential on the whole `singer songwriter' movement of the late 60's and early 70's. However, this is an album I respect more than I enjoy.