Songs From a Room

Leonard Cohen | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 20, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000024UF
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #200,901 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Bird on a Wire

2. The Story of Isaac

3. A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes

4. Partisan

5. Seems So Long Ago, Nancy

6. The Old Revolution

7. The Butcher

8. You Know Who I Am

9. Lady Midnight

10. Tonight Will Be Fine

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

"I choose the rooms that I live in with care / The windows are small and the walls almost bare," Leonard Cohen sings in a particularly telling couplet in "Tonight Will Be Fine," one of the highlights in this aptly titled album from 1969. The Canadian poet-performer's sophomore release has the sub rosa feel of an attic hideaway, thanks in part to Bob Johnston's restrained production. Cohen's near-monotone vocals are suitable for conveying his finely honed, meditative musings but--at this stage in his development--not much else. Johnston's soundscapes aren't as beguiling as the ones John Simon created for Cohen's superior debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen, though lovely orchestral shadings flatter such Cohen classics as the oft-covered "Bird on the Wire" and "Story of Isaac." Songs from a Room is only a secondary effort when it's stacked up against its consummate predecessor, But by any other measurement, it's an exceptionally literate and enigmatic recording by a true original. --Steven Stolder

Product Description

By the time Leonard Cohen began his recording career in 1967, the iconoclastic Canadian troubadour was already well established as a poet and author. He quickly emerged as one of the era's most original and influential singer-songwriters, building a large and legendary body of work that continues to inspire artists and listeners alike.

Much of Cohen's reputation and mystique was established by his early work for Columbia Records, particularly the five albums he recorded between 1967 and 1974. Now, these five classic albums, unavailable on vinyl for two decades, have been lovingly restored to their original LP format.

For their new Sundazed editions, all five albums have been meticulously remastered and have been sourced from the original Columbia Records stereo masters in order to preserve the sound of the original albums. In keeping with the exacting standards for which Sundazed has become known, each album will be pressed on high-definition vinyl, with complete original cover art.

Cohen's sophomore effort Songs from a Room (recorded with producer Bob Johnston, renowned for his work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, the Byrds and Simon and Garfunkel) was a worthy follow-up, boasting such enduring compositions as "Bird on the Wire," "Story of Isaac" and "A Bunch of Lonesome Heros." --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Master Songs, June 30, 2000

By 

Vyvyan Brunst (Fort Collins, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Songs From a Room (Audio CD)

I once spent the whole of a night in Vancouver, B.C. filling a small apartment with balloons as a gift to the woman I lived with at the time. I imagined her delight at opening the door to find the rooms crowded with inconvenient color. But she didn't come home that night.

Leonard Cohen's Songs From A Room played continuously until the sun rose. It was a perfect Cohen moment: pathetic but also comical, lonely but not altogether lost, in turn full of bright buoyant images and pale, creeping light.

He likes his rooms more spartan, but he would have appreciated the irony: Cohen's heroes often balance on a knife edge between sacrifice and suspicion; ready to give it all up for love one moment, and caught in wry resignation the next.

Although overshadowed by its haunting predecessor, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs From A Room is probably my favorite of Leonard's albums. It is - unbelievably - more personal than the first. It seems to begin and end in resolute introspection. As Cohen fans may agree, one almost wonders after living with his songs for years whether Leonard wrote them and sang them for you, or whether you wrote them and gave them to him - so much do they become a magnetic North for our own emotional compasses. In Songs Leonard seems to explore every human relationship: that of lovers certainly ("Tonight Will Be Fine"), but also father and son ("Story of Isaac," "The Butcher"), patriot and country ("The Partisan," "The Old Revolution"), and ambiguous, erotic friendship ("Seems So Long Ago, Nancy").

In this album more than in any other, one of Cohen's most consistent themes repeats: that of the revolutionary. Specifically, how revolutionaries embody an awkward convergence of the saintly, the solitary, and the social. As the heroine in "Joan of Arc" (Songs of Love and Hate, 1971) declares,"..."I'm tired of the war,/I want the kind of work I had before,/a wedding dress or something white..." Like Joan, these heroes are often betrayed by the forces they fight for, and they tend to disillusionment. "I fought in the old revolution/," sings the narrator of "The Old Revolution", "on the side of the ghost and the King./Of course I was very young/and I thought that we were winning/I can't pretend I still feel very much like singing/as they carry the bodies away." To what does the song refer? The Vietnam War? Rock and Roll? It doesn't matter. We know what it feels like.

Love is a revolutionary act. It may overturn countries, or it may not. But it does overturn us.

The sixties saw the appearance of a phenomenon called the "singer-songwriter." We were told that in the best of their work, popular singers were writing and singing poetry. Only a bare handful - among them Paul Simon and Bob Dylan - were legitimate contenders. Leonard Cohen, despite the self-consciousness of his early work, will join Dylan as the best of these. Stack any line of Yeats against this from "The Stranger Song:" "And while he talks his dreams to sleep/you notice there's a highway/that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder..." (Songs of Leonard Cohen, 1968). The image in its compactness chills.

In "The Butcher" the protagonist comes upon a man slaughtering a lamb only to recognize that the butcher is his father. We are always at the mercy of what we love, Cohen seems to say. And betrayal is just around the corner when we dare to love - whether it is a country or a woman. But in the end, however pointless the exercise seems - like a roomful of balloons - we sometimes find ourselves surrounded by beauty. I recall that when Jennifer Warnes put out Famous Blue Raincoat, a compilation of Cohen's songs, the master himself seemed astonished that in her mouth his songs were so "beautiful." They are beautiful, Leonard. They're just not pretty.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I am the one who loves changing from nothing to one, February 25, 2003

By 

Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Songs From a Room (Audio CD)

Cohen followed up his debut album with another masterpiece, this collection of magnificent songs of solitude, despair and resignation. Besides The Partisan, a song about the French resistance with its beautiful French verses and female vocals, all compositions are by Cohen. The most popular number here is Bird On A Wire that has been covered by artists as diverse as Johnny Cash, Joe Cocker, Judy Collins, Rita Coolidge, Tim Hardin, The Neville Brothers and Jennifer Warnes. For some reason, the opening lines of Bunch Of Lonesome Heroes makes me think of Frodo's journey to Mordor (in Lord Of The Rings): "A bunch of lonesome and very quarrelsome heroes/Were smoking out upon the open road." Other highlights include The Story Of Isaac and The Old Revolution, in both of which Cohen's characteristic Biblical imagery surfaces, and the somber Lady Midnight with its many levels of meaning. Seems So Long Ago is a wistful confessional dirge whilst You Know Who I Am is a delicate love poem with esoteric undertones:"I am the one who loves changing from nothing to one". The mood lightens up on the closing track Tonight Will Be Fine with its catchy melody, driving rhythm and erotic lyric to end the album on a more optimistic note, although even here the sadness is just a sigh away. Cohen's sublime music has a transcendent, spiritual quality. These haunting songs "from a room" have lost none of their poetic impact after 3 decades; their grace, elegance and beauty shine on.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cohen does it again, January 21, 1999

By 

Oostrijck (Rotterdam) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Songs From a Room (Audio CD)

This album is one of Cohen's classic albums and contains many brilliant songs. Still I prefere "Songs of Leonard Cohen" and "Songs of love and hate"over this one, but that's merely a matter of taste. Songs like "Bird on a wire", "The Partisan", "lady midnight"," You know who I am" and "Story of Isaac" are all classic and superb Cohen songs. No Cohen collection can do without this album. No bad songs on this one either. Buy it, love it, treasure it.