Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker (Audio)
Leonard Cohen's final album is a bleak masterpiece
Pop's longest-serving poet: Leonard Cohen
Neil McCormick, music critic
11 NOVEMBER 2016 • 9:51AM
Leonard Cohen’s 14th studio album is a bleak masterpiece for hard times from pop’s longest-serving poet. At 82 years old, what is truly extraordinary about Cohen is not that he is still making albums but that they are as rich, deep and potent as ever. If anything, his ruminations on life gain added poignancy and urgency with passing time.
Something between defeat and defiance has crept into his tone, which has dropped to a half-spoken bass whisper, a grumble and sigh filtered through a weary frailty that makes his pearly couplets shine even brighter.
The musical setting, by Cohen’s talented singer-songwriting son Adam, is perfection, an organic bed of elegantly twanging guitar lines, humming organ, melancholy piano and aching violin, following stately chord progressions framed by the warm, female vocal harmonies that have become a Cohen trademark.
