Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You'll never be the same again, December 14, 1998
By A Customer
People ,what can I say. When I lived in Germany in the begining of 1997 I bought this CD at a bargain. I didn't really know Cohen, except for two songs: Suzanne and First we take manhattan (not on this album). Still I bought it, sensing that something great was about to happen. Listening to it for the first time, I had to get used to his voice, but very soon the songs just absorbed me and I couldn't help feeling strong emotions with every song...what great lyrics...such an emtionless voice, yet it conveys so many emotions. I can honestly say that Cohen has influenced my personality a great deal and I have never been the same after buying this CD. Only recently did I buy all of his other official albums. It took me so long because I was affraid that I would be disappointed because "Best Of" is so perfect, that I thought all the rest had to be less good....I was wrong...I recently told my father that basically I can sell all my other CD's by other singers, for nothing can even come close to what Cohen does to me, except for the Russian-German singer Ivan Rebroff, but he belongs to a totally different musical scene. I love all Cohen's CD's, except for Death of a Ladies' man, which isn't a very good CD. All the other albums are splendid. Every album conveys a different emotion and sounds different than the other albums. I can't imagine my life without Cohen anymore. ps: I wouldn't mind e-mailing with other Cohen fans...an answer guaranteed
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Soon it comes round to your soul., March 28, 2002
We rarely think of Leonard Cohen as a pop star or rock idol - the very idea is absurd, almost sacreligious. Indeed, the very idea of thinking about him in terms of music at all seems wrongheaded - Cohen is a poet, who has condescended to use music as a means of reaching a wider audience than poets normally do. Most pop songs are expressions of a single emotion - Cohen tells stories, often in parable or ballad form, utilising a vocabulary so rigorously crafted, so austere and simple, it has the lapidary quality of the Bible (to which they often refer). Its apparent sincerity and plainness masks a remarkable playfulness, not just in the humour working underneath the most solemn of songs, but in the stories' switches in register, which at one moment seem to be about disintegrating relationships, the emptiness of loss, the elusiveness of other people, the intangibility of memory, or the transiecne of sex and desire; and at others seem to be a religious or political allegory about baptism, redemption, freedom or liberation. Statement and metaphor become indistinguishable in Cohen, which is why people spend lifetimes with his records, decoding their mysteries. The music is an unobtrusive background for this largely literary activity.This was the caricatured conception I always had of Leonard Cohen, perhaps resentful of his always being limped with those other dullards of 60s earnestness, Dylan, Neil Young, The Doors, etc., in the posturing tastes of my teenage peers. But, over the years, it is not Cohen's words, but his haunting, repetitive, melodies that have stayed with me. Listening to these soul-etched songs for the first time in ages, I was surprised at how MUSICAL they were. Most follow the same formula - a repeated acoustic guitar is soon accompanied by strings or female backing vocals - but there are reverberant nuances throughout. The bobbing guitar of 'Suzanne' mimics the river the story is played out against, suggesting both stasis and movement, cradling the songs' heavy symbolic weight. Fairground music and strange tinkles brighten 'Sisters of Mercy'. 'So Long, Marianne' is perhaps the most musically inventive, full of fluid metamorphoses, from country hoe-down to military tattoo to Mediterranean mandolin. 'Bird On A Wire' and 'That's No Way To Say Goodbye' fray with Jew's harp; the latter has weirdly easy-listening, popping 'bap bam bam' backing vocals. The grating restlessness on the guitar in 'The Partisan' captures the song's sense of exile, of being on the run, far from home. The method can sometimes become mannered, and neither 'Take This Longing' nor 'Who By Fire' count among Cohen's finest moments. 'Famous Blue Raincoat' is the masterpiece where it all comes together - the sparse atmosphere; the anti-dramatic narrative; the ambivalent language in the story-telling; the backing vocals that may or may not be the ghost of a lost love, or maybe echoes of the lost living now haunting the phantom narrator; the clash between a modern setting and a timeless vocabulary; and, especially the circular music, all its components spiralling into nothingness.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry Put to Music, June 10, 2002
The first time I ever heard the music of Lenard Cohen was in the classic, Robert Altman anti-western, "McCabe & Mrs.Miller". Cohen's solemn songs perfectly matched the dirty, muddy, frontier town featured in the movie. After seeing the film I had to find the amazing music I had heard on the soundtrack.I finally found it in this 'Best of Collection'."The Best of Lenard Cohen" has become what I like to call my favorite mope music. By mope music, I'm talking about when your feeling depressed or your in no way in the mood for cheery, bouncy tunes. A lot of people listen to groups like The Cure or Pink Floyd for something like this. I prefer the quiet singing of Mr. Cohen and his beautiful songs. Whenever I'm in the mood, I will put this disc on and listen to it's many classic tunes such as "Bird on a Wire", "Sisters of Mercy" or "So Long Marianne".My personal favorite song is "Suzanne".The lyrics to these songs are pure poetry. Everytime I hear this CD, I still picture in my mind, Altman's beautiful masterpiece of a film.I love it!This is truely a great collection of songs which will be an important part of any music collection.
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