Leonard Cohen
New Skin for the Old Ceremony

THE REVIEW

This record would certainly not be my first choice if someone asked me for a recommendation on Leonard Cohen: fifty years later, I still find it hard to truly appreciate it and if I were to rank it, I would put it among the non-essential ones.

I was twenty when I bought it blindly – having loved his early albums so much, the three in the "Songs …" series – but even then, at first listen, it seemed to me a "difficult" record, as if the author had worked hard to prove something that had not quite turned out right, with references I couldn’t grasp and even a title I didn’t understand.

In the playlist of 11 medium-level tracks, there was no sign of a real hit, I mean one of those apparently simple songs ("Bird On A Wire," just to mention) or with a chorus that stood out and stuck in your head without being trivial (like the one in "So Long, Marianne" instead of the one here in "Lover, Lover, Lover"). I justify my disappointment back then by telling myself that my English was too weak to venture – without the help of lyrics the album didn’t provide – into understanding tracks like "Field Commander Cohen" or "Who By Fire", and the whole album seemed insubstantial to me. Today things have settled, and I’m no longer so harsh: the (relative) robustness of the orchestration no longer surprises me (which seemed redundant back then), nor does the reinforcement of background vocals (even Bob Dylan had it). Above all, today you can easily find the lyrics of all the songs online (the official Italian site also provides excellent translations), making it easier for everyone to access the most significant pieces, the ones already mentioned and at least two others: the intriguing "Chelsea Hotel #2", dedicated to Janis Joplin, and then "There Is a War", for me the most beautiful song, with its ruthless metaphor of love as a battlefield, "a war between man and woman."

For me there's little else to add, besides remembering the uniqueness of his voice: here too, sometimes sweet and enchanting, more often sharp and incisive, which never quite finds that almost prophetic emphasis I had loved in his early albums, the truly "recommended" ones. And then the cover, certainly not ugly, but more distinguished negatively than for any intrinsic significance of its own, as it is one of the very few that does not feature a photograph of dear Leonard.