Leonard Cohen
Old Ideas

"I'm old and the mirrors don't lie..."

Seventy-seven years old, eight since the last album of new material: not too many to give birth to a surprisingly beautiful album that managed to dissolve the skepticism I had before listening to it. Don't say it was obvious that I would like it, because no, it wasn't. I love Cohen's early records, as is well-known, but I've struggled to digest the ones released from the Eighties onwards, at least musically.

It may be that Leonard is old now: too old to continue dragging along an electronic burden that has characterized the arrangements of his songs for many albums. Not too old, however, to undertake a long tour with top-notch musicians (the same ones who collaborate on the album), to find in them the inspiration to finally shed that weight, to seek a new balance in sound, to renew himself.

Maybe it's not the right word, "renew," because in the end, there's not much new. And certainly, it's not a mystery, it even tells us - ironically - the album's title: Old Ideas, old ideas that return, but without monotony: a raw and visionary look at the world that very much reminds one of "The Future" (here in "Amen"), spirituality that takes the form of genuine prayers ("Come Healing, "Show Me the Place"). And of course, love, even in its most earthly and sensual form ("Crazy to Love You", "Anyhow").

Cohen conveys in the language of poets old ideas that are also the ideas of an elder, like the awareness of not having much time left to live, approached with ironic lightness. He even speaks to his image as a songwriter in "Going Home", the opening track, as if he were a slightly senile old grandfather talking to himself and eliciting a bit of tenderness.

If you are looking for innovative melodies and vocal feats, feel free to change the record. It's a sung recitative, whispered with a voice shaped by millions of cigarettes that delves into the staff and the soul of the listener, accompanied by backgrounds of gospel - a genre Cohen has already accustomed us to in the past -, echoes of jazz and blues and even some guitar reminiscent of the old, very old times (the one at the beginning of "The Darkness" vaguely reminds me of "Avalanche"). Indispensable are the female voices that Cohen never misses: the loyal Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson, Dana Glover, and the sublime Webb Sisters.

In short, a surprisingly beautiful album, as I was saying at the beginning, but not a masterpiece comparable to those of the golden days (but, in the end, is it possible to create a masterpiece forty years later?). Its forty-minute duration seems too short. The tracks, then, are distributed in an apparently unplanned way (or are strategically placed to concentrate the best at the beginning and distract as one approaches the end of the album...). The last track, with its somewhat old-fashioned tinge in the finale, leaves an unpleasant sense of incompleteness and bitterness.

Yet, despite these small disturbances, it remains a commendable work. These days, a little jewel that deserves at least one, two, a hundred and fifty listens.