Leonard Cohen – ‘Songs of Leonard Cohen’
The title of the record might be unimaginative, but from thereon, Leonard Cohen makes up for that in every way imaginable. With a simple, sharpened melody picked from the humble E-major scale, he welcomes you into a world of luscious slumber from the first few hushed notes alone. Evoking an image of a pillow-propped poet, shepherding his whims from the duvet to the writing desk and back over to the window for a spot of gazing inspiration, Cohen coaxes the ideal picture of a romantic folk troubadour waxing lyrical from the confines of his insular creative den, wondering about his hard-luck place in the world at large.
As ‘Suzanne’ develops beyond its elegant opening, it swells towards the lofty heights of one of the finest opening songs ever put to record. First penned as a poem, the words cry out for the cushioned edges of a guitar to waltz the reader along. The tale of a muse engaged with another, leaving nothing but platonic scraps for the singer to eagerly feed on and then lament, in leaner times, is as dissonant and sparse as the melody and musical choices.
Whilst the mentions of Montréal landmarks may well have symbolic implications, they also imbue the song with imagery and the sort of café culture creature comforts that we associate with the smartly sartorial songsmith—churches, riversides, tea and oranges are motifs for academics to pore over, but also, more casually, a cross-legged, crisp chinoed world that establishes a spiritual base for the album. The song is as complex but pure as the impetus that spawned it. It sets the tone for a record that barely seems to strain a sinew in translating whatever is on Cohen’s mind with exacting similitude.
The plucking pours over onto ‘Master Song’. Here, the imagery is more theoretical, and this allows you to pause and appreciate the intricacies of the music for a moment. Poetry and songwriting are two very different fields – albeit with Cohen, it can sometimes get confused – and flourishes like the little pace-jolting key change earlier than expected in ‘Master Song’ is a mark of astute musicology. With his dry baritone and the spareness of the arrangements on Songs of Leonard Cohen, it would be easy for the whole thing to become maudlin, samey and dry, but the inflexions in the melody keep things interesting and prove that Cohen doesn’t let poetry get in the way of a good tune.
He also brings a sense of self-awareness to proceedings that many self-professed ‘poets’ lack. The tale of a woman constantly providing “warmth”, “love”, and “shelter” for men who are using her in ‘The Stranger Song’ is a stirring exposition of life. It is gorgeously written with some of the most poetic lyrics that have ever been put to a song. You listen along and ironically yearn for the lines to be put to paper only so that you can catch up to the rolling stream of pathos that he so casually delivers.
Alas, the pièce de résistance arrives with ‘So Long, Marianne’. If there was ever an accusation that Cohen’s strength was limited to the field of lyrics and left wanting in terms of songwriting and performance, then ‘So Long, Marianne’ is the gilded pop-perfect middle finger to that. To throw lines like “held on to me like a crucifix” and “I’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web / is fastening my ankle to a stone” into something that could be considered an ‘earworm’ is a gargantuan feat that expresses his well-rounded craft. Once again, Cohen delves into the complexities of love, pitting contentedness against curiosity and the happiness of lasting love alongside the thrill of fleeting lust in a realist lampoon on typical romance.
It is an exuberant elucidation of all that music can offer, and it soars freely above workaday woes, showering down the embalming boon that Cohen’s songbook freely scatters like rays of warming sun or showers of godly rain: a sense of reconciled reality transfigured towards comfort—somethings work out, others don’t, and there is a beauty to that. ‘So Long, Marianne’ takes this bittersweet pact of life and amplifies the sweetness with sweeping strings.
‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’ and ‘One of Us Cannot Be Wrong’ are also high points on an album that barely drops below that level. It is a record that is undoubtedly profound, but there is also something humble, accessible and wholesome about it. It is also honest, happy to embrace harsh truths and focus on the complexities of love rather than offer up the easier facsimile of romanticism. The typifying element of the true-to-life entanglements encapsulated on Songs of Leonard Cohen is that the album is also orchestral by turns but also always feels like a man alone in a room, ruminating on everything outside his window.
