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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Listen again, more closely this time..., January 30, 2006
Just like many fans of Cohen's early work, at first listen I was absolutely appaled by this album. The soaring violins and overwrought orchestration struck me as disgusting, and I found myself unable to listen to the album all the way through, even though some of the lyrics that I did hear seemed interesting. Still, even lyrically it seemed a step down from the poetry of his first four studio albums, as though Cohen hadn't given the same meticulous attention to these songs as to many of his previous works (and indeed, I found out sometime later that he and Spector co-wrote these lyrics in less than two weeks, which is an anomoly for Cohen, who typically spends at least a couple years fine-tuning his songs). So I discarded the album, and moved on to explore his later catologue (which, by the way, I am not a fan of. Everything after Various Positions, particularly Ten New Songs, I find incredibly embarassing. I cringed the first time I heard Sharon Robinson crooning over a cheap smooth jazz backing , "whoa whoa, in my secret life!"). A few months later, I decided to give Death of a Ladies' Man another go. About halfway through "Paper-Thin Hotel", I suddenly saw what this album is about. Yes, the orchestration is grotesque, but that's precisely the POINT. It is vulgar, hard to swallow, but somehow grotesquely beautiful. Listen to "Paper Thin Hotel", "I Left a Woman Waiting", "Iodine", or the title track--and listen closely--and you'll see what I mean. This is "sound art" in the truest sense, not at all concerned with being pleasing or agreeable. Cohen's earlier albums were brooding and introspective, but Death of a Ladies Man is downright deranged, a manic-depressive album (comparable in some ways maybe to Lou Reed's Street Hassle, though DOaLM is a better album). Consider the first line sung on the album (from "True Love Leaves no Traces": "As the mist leaves no scar on the dark green hill, so my body leaves no scar on yours, and never will..." If you made the mistake, on your first listen, of thinking this a simple love song, listen to it again (I'm not going to get into a discussion of themes in this music, but needless to say, as with all of Cohen's music, there's a lot going on here beneath the surface). The next song, "Iodine", says "You let me love you until I was a failure", and "Your saintly kisses reeked of iodine". Then probably the greatest song on the album is "Paper-Thin Hotel", in which the narrator hears his woman making love to another man and feels (get this) blissful about it, obviously having some sort of manic depressive breakdown ("I heard your kisses at the door; I never saw the world so clear before," "I felt so good I couldn't feel a thing"). Then consider the perversity of "Memories" and "Don't go Home with your Hard-On", or the mournful depravity of the title track ("She said 'I'll make a place between my legs; I'll show you solitude..."), and it becomes clear that a more "ordinary" or traditionally "pretty" arrangement just wouldn't have worked. It had to be ugly, it had to be off-putting. It's just that sort of album. This is not music to sing along with, or to play in the background at a dinner party; it is a glimpse into a tortured, sexually depraved psyche (moreso than Cohen's other albums, likely because of the influence of Spector, who truly is a depraved lunatic), and you'll come out of the experience perhaps a little shaken, but certainly glad you listened.
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~ Leonard Cohen
~ Leonard Cohen
~ Leonard Cohen
~ Leonard Cohen
~ Leonard Cohen
album Death of a Ladies' Man 
