Cohen, Cohen, gone! (I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen)

Name: tlws

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Product:	I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen
Date:	13.03.06 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: groundbreaking tracks, bittersweet

Disadvantages: are you crazy?

Bought in HMV for £4.99 a few years back, this is a good collection of melancholy folksy musings by one of the greatest lyricists of the twentieth century and beyond. This collection is a good starting point for those wishing to explore Mr. Cohen's back -catalogue, including the important early works. Beginning with the timeless 'Suzanne', you will be drawn into his brooding and introspective world - a beautiful and haunting a depiction of transient and impermanent love, 'Suzanne' is tangible in it's imagery and nostalgic whims.

The man himself...

Ever the eccentric, Cohen was encouraged at an early age, by his father, to express himself. By the time he reached his teens, was already a competent guitarist and a fixture in the Montreal Cafe circuit, performing his own poetry to the Canadian beatniks. His poetry achieved critical acclaim and was published in under the title 'Let Us Compare Mythologies'; this was then followed by two novels 'The Favourite Game' (1963) and 'Beautiful Losers' (1966). It was then that he decided to merge the two mediums of music and poetry - the song 'Suzanne' being adopted by mid-sixties folk singer Judy Collins, and receiving critical and chart success. Later on in the sixties, Cohen made the charts with his own version of this now classic song.

All the songs on this 'Greatest Hits' album are classics in their own right, and are evocative and terse depictions of the intellectual and melancholic backdrop of 1960s American Bohemia. From the lusty 'Chelsea hotel No.2', in which Cohen describes vividly his sexual encounter with Janis Joplin in a seedy New York hotel room, to the incredibly subdued and monotonous tragi-romantic beauty of 'The Partisan', this CD offers a varied collaboration of Cohen's early music.

Cohen writes brief descriptions of his inspirations for the songs in the coverlet of the album sleeve, and is particularly elusive about the content of 'Chelsea Hotel No.2' and refuses to name the female singer in question - saying 'I wrote this for an American singer who died a while ago', but he related at a later date that it was Joplin who gave 'him head on the bed'.

My favourite track by far is 'Famous blue raincoat', simply because of the beautiful, haunting melodies and imagery used There is a certain relatablility of this inanimate object that has followed him everywhere, met certain people and has worn away and aged just like its owner, yet overshadows Cohen's presence in the song and renders him as a ghost, never actually wearing the coat, but watching it float about in the past or as Cohen says, makes him look like a 'spider', ethereal and ubiquitous. The meaning of the song is not at all obvious, with poetic conceits (roses in teeth et al) and imagery of doom clouding the otherwise simple melancholic tone of the verse, for example, the speaker in the song (who I don't believe is Cohen) frequently asks whether someone ever went 'clear'. Any ideas what clear is exactly? I don't think we are ever supposed to know, but I think left by itself lends itself to erotic suggestiveness and of promiscuous use of drugs - the alcoholic haze and dirge of New York by moonlight.

The album, showing a sepia photogrrph of Cohen at his broodingly introspective best, contains 12 tracks:

1) Suzanne
2) Sisters Of Mercy
3) So Long, Marianne
4)Bird ON The Wire
5) Lady Midnight
6) The Partisan
7) Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
8)Famous Blue Raincoat
9)Last Year's Man
10) Chelsea Hotel No.2
11) Who By Fire
12) Take This Longing

And also - in the coverlet-includes explanations and drawings by the man himself.

Sublime- ageless poetry to music...

Summary: Leonard Cohen's greatest hits album