Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry in motion, July 12, 2002
New Skin For The Old Ceremony is a masterpiece, and one of Leonard Cohen's best albums. It's a truly great effort, and too often overlooked. Although his first three albums - particularly the first and third - are all certified masterpieces, this one, his fourth, was his first attempt to move beyond them in scope. Incorporating background vocalists and a wider array of instrumentation than he employed on those sparse first three efforts, Cohen creates here an album broader, more epic in scope than its predecessors. He also began, for the first time, to lighten up on the subject matter of his lyrics: incorporating some - albeit rather dark - humor into several of the songs here, Cohen creates an album - which, along with its broader musical pallette - that is a much easier listen this his first three, which were at times so depressing as to lend themselves to the status of "mood" albums. That said, Cohen is Cohen, and his themes remain the same; he has a lighter touch here at times, is all. Although the opening track, Is This What You Wanted?, features lyrics like "You were K.Y. Jelly/I was Vaseline" much of the rest of the album is pervaded with a deep and dark sense of self-loathing: Cohen places himself on a pedastal and de-construcs his persona as he did on "Avalanche", but in a much less abstract, far more direct and disturbing way. Cohen at this time was going through a period of extreme personal depression and writer's block (which would culminate in the Phil Spector collaboration on Death of A Ladies' Man), and songs such as Field Commander Cohen and A Singer Must Die attest to his state of mind at the time. A deep, dark, driving masterpiece with just the right amount of light touch, New Skin For The Old Ceremony is a great album, and an essential purchase for any admirer of Leonard Cohen.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It makes you dance while crying, December 28, 1999
By A Customer
Full of detached intimacy, this album is superior for Cohen or any other artist. Blending his poetry with offbeat, almost tribal-sounding instruments brings out the primitive feelings of lost affairs, love, and even the sounds of war. Simply beautiful.
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22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A step up for Cohen, November 11, 2001
"You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen/You were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline/You were the father of modern medicine, I was Mr. Clean/You where the (...) and the beast of Babylon, I was Rin Tin Tin," Leonard Cohen sings on "Is This What You Wanted," a song that displays the much-needed dose of humor added to his lyrical exercises in regret and self-depreciation on his fourth album, 1974's New Skin for the Old Ceremony. New Skin's more varied instrumentation, looser vocal approach and added wit make it Cohen's best album yet. Although he was always a finely skilled and richly tender poet, one could only endure so much of Cohen's earlier albums as spirit-stomping and disheartened as they were. Although the main subject matter of New Skin is still grief, Cohen confronts life's tragedies with a different approach. He abandons the mournful wailing of songs like "Bird on a Wire" or "Stories of the Street" and the somber expressions of "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" or "The Stranger Song" and dons a type of charisma, classified somewhere between crooner and beatnik, and stands in a mock-confrontational pose, challenging both the complicated nature of society ("A Singer Must Die," "Field Commander Cohen," "There is a War") and distressing predicaments with another cast of abusive, self-destructive, yet intoxicating women ("I Tried to Leave You," "Chelsea Hotel #2," "Leaving Green Sleeves") with a fistful of clever irony and satire. Cohen's tongue being placed in his cheek does not, however, equal the complete loss of the intimate, folk rock beauty of his music. "Who by the Fire" is as striking, moving and poignant any song the man has written and "Take This Longing" is one of his most ardent, elegantly expressed requests. Generally, the album keeps the solemn and dignified air of Cohen's previous works. Its added whimsical flair only makes his music more entertaining and invigorating.
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