Album of the week: Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas

LATE last year, Leonard Cohen received the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, one to add to the groaning shelf of accolades that also includes a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and inductions into both the Rock’n’Roll and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Cohen is a notorious obfuscator when it comes to discussing his writing, remarking in his acceptance speech that “if I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often”. But at the age of 77, he has plenty of wisdom to impart (and probably plenty more lifetime award ceremonies at which to do so). On this occasion, he spoke with measured eloquence on an early lesson that one should “never lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.”

Old Ideas, his first album in eight years, does that, just not strictly within those particular confines. That’s because Leonard Cohen is an old rogue, fully capable of comporting himself with both dignity and beauty, but simply unable to resist seasoning his work with playful, often mordant humour.

He is as mischievous as ever on opening track Going Home, encouraging the idea that “Leonard Cohen” is an artistic trademark by taking a step outside the persona and having a right old go at his enduring image. Here, the urbane ladies’ man is dismissed as “a lazy bastard living in a suit”.

“I love to speak to Leonard,” he whispers with relish, describing “Leonard” as a mere mouthpiece, and a skin he plans to shed in the end.

Having rocked the boat right at the start, what are we to make of the confessional tone elsewhere? Old Ideas is up there with Johnny Cash’s final albums as a meditation on mortality (and morality, for that matter). Maybe he’s not a straight-shooter like Cash but there is still a great sobriety and sincerity to, say, these lines from The Darkness on the depression he suffered for much of his adult life: “the present’s not that pleasant… I thought the past would last me, but the darkness got that too”.

Cohen shook off that shadow at a Buddhist retreat in the 1990s, emerging lighter in both mind and pocket – his business manager having swindled him out of his pension fund. There is probably a Confucian saying to express the karmic benefits which resulted when Cohen saddled up his pony and headed back out on tour to recoup his losses, playing 247 shows in 31 countries between 2008 and 2010.

He was reinvigorated by the experience but his remarkable voice sounds utterly ravaged now. Cohen puts it down to giving up smoking. These days he can manage a stage whisper, or stretch to a gruff growl. But it suits the hangdog tone of the record and brings out even more of a beauty/beast contrast with his exquisite backing chorus of Dana Glover, Sharon Robinson, Hattie and Charley Webb and, back in the fold, Jennifer Warnes, all cooing divinely like good angels on his shoulder.

On Anyhow, the combination of Cohen’s gravelly rumble and their siren sighs is akin to the voodoo jazz of Dr John’s bewitching early albums. Here, Cohen plays the cad returning with his tail between his legs, looking for absolution, or at least a drop of mercy for his trangressions. “I know you have to hate me – could you hate me less?” he inquires with a conversational wryness.

Throughout the album, Cohen has one foot on the altar, the other in the bedroom. Show Me The Place is a submissive plea from an old man for assistance to worship as he would like: “Show me the place, help me roll away the stone, show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone.” When he seeks wholeness again later on the album, the Sirens mop his brow and kiss it all better with the soothing gospel balm of Come Healing.

Amen is a mournful slow dance to a beautifully understated backing, featuring the quiet twang of guitar strings, the merest hint of banjo, a delicate brush on the snare, a muted trumpet striking the devastating blow, then soulful violin to finish the job. But all the while Cohen is gripping his partner tightly, obsessively bidding her to “tell me again” about the old times.

He sounds truly weary on Crazy To Love You, a bare Cash-like country blues in which he counts the cost of love, and thoroughly disgruntled on Different Sides as he documents the war of attrition in a relationship where the two parties want entirely different things: “down in the valley, the famine goes on” he remarks bitterly.

But that’s “Leonard” for you. Mr Cohen is far from resigned. Already he is talking about another album and tour. If he has any more of these old ideas to impart, it would be sheer pleasure to hear them.

Rating: ****

Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas

Columbia, £12.99