Having just become a septuagenarian last month, Leonard Cohen may very well be the oldest living singer I purchase a new CD by this year. But that certainly hasn’t stopped him from being the white, Jewish, Canadian, Beat Generation answer to Barry White, a fact not lost on him, as he sings on his latest CD Dear Heather…

Because of a few songs whererin I spoke of their mystery
Women have been exceptionally kind to my old age

Yes, even at 70, Leonard Cohen still has the ability to sing a line like “gimme crack and anal sex” (as he did as a young man of 58) and make it sound infinitely mysterious and seductive. He sing-speaks his way through his songs with the depth and gravity, expansive self-possession and intimidating whimsy of an ancient Persian sultan, surrounding himself with a small harem of younger, female voices concubining themselves in sweet, celestial harmonies over his words.

They become naked in their different ways, and as “Because of” closes out, he stops singing altogether, reveling in the way his “girls” vie for his attentions as they repeat through the fade: Look at me, Leonard. Look at me, Leonard. Look at me Leonard…

[dramatic pause]

Okay, so that song crosses the line into the creepily goofy.

And in fact, Dear Heather may very well be the most whimsical record Cohen’s made in decades. Where previously, his songs have been wordy, sprawling things with more verses-per-song than is legal in most states, here, he can be downright minimalist. The title track is a single stanza that he (and his girls) recite in a strange cadence evocative of someone reading out loud what they’re writing down on paper… an effect heightened when he actually starts spelling out some of the words later on in the song.

Likewise, where recent albums have been performed almost solely on synthesizers, the instrumentation on Dear Heather, though still highly synthetic, at least feels more organic, especially on songs like “The Letters” and “Villanelle for Our Time”, both of which find Cohen returning to his spoken word roots with surprisingly effective results. And somewhere in the time since we last heard from him, Leonard’s acquired himself a mouth harp. And it pops up in some unexpected, and questionably appropriate places. As on the song “On That Day”

Some people say it’s what we deserve for sins against God
For crimes in the world
I wouldn’t know
I’m just holding the fort
Since that day they wounded New York

And I’m thinking, “aahh yes, the requisite, touching 9/11 song”. And then…

BOINGGGG! BOINGGG!

Hey, how’d that mouth harp get in there? Given the solemnity of the song to that point, it seemed like a weird bit of comic relief, and I’m still not sure if he meant it that way. And though I appreciate the subtle ambiguity it lends to the song, it would have seemed a bit more congruous on a bluegrass ditty.

Luckily, Cohen gives us a bluegrass ditty (well, as bluegrass as Cohen will ever get) a couple tracks later with the thrillingly gorgeous “Nightingale”, which feels reminiscent of that baptism scene in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, only with a septuagenarian, Canadian Jew playing the part of George Clooney.

Unlike his last album, the disappointingly formless and generic Ten New Songs (2001), for which we had to wait nearly ten years, Dear Heather (for which we only had to wait three) holds together as a coherent work, in the same way that past masterpieces like Songs from a Room (1969) and The Future (1992) did; when he’s at his best, Cohen can bring the largest events – international politics, the deterioration of Western Civilization, war and peace, et cetera – into the most intimate places. His heart, and his bed. And he does this all with a strong sense of musicological history. The reason he can draw lightly on jazz and bluegrass and beat poetry and pop all in the space of a three or four minute song (and yes, Future fans, these are three and four minute songs), is because he knows those forms… and in a sense, he’s lived them.

And he lives these songs in a way he didn’t live Ten New Songs. At a time when other singers his age might be soberly contemplating their mortality in and out of song, Cohen is singing unabashedly about women “bending over his bed” and “covering” him as if he were the Lizard King himself. He warms his words with the heat of his body and his apparently indefatigable lust and faith. Dear Heather may very well be the sexiest thing we hear all year.

- - - - -
BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:

“Dear Heather” by Leonard Cohen
Columbia Records
Released 10/26/04

Produced by Leonard Cohen and Leanne Ungar
47 min.

SONGS: Go No More A-Roving – Because of – The Letters – Undertow – Morning Glory – On That Day – Villanelle for our Time – There for You – Dear Heather – Nightingale – To a Teacher – The Faith – Tennessee Waltz (live)



Recommended: Yes