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When in 1967 SOLC appeared on the American market, its 33-year-old author could boast a highly respectable literary output.
Two of the lyrics (Suzanne, The Stranger Song), contained in his first musical work, were already known to his fans because they were part of the latest poetry collection released. His two novels, “The Favorite Game” and ”Beautiful Losers”, would also make a significant impact on the press across half of America.
Leonard Cohen was born in Montreal, the Jerusalem of the North, in 1934. Of European Jewish origin, his family actively participated in creating a multicultural intelligentsia in the French-speaking town. This particular family and intellectual condition instantly proves to be so influential that it overshadows the myth of the poet with a guitar on his shoulder.
It impressively carves out indelible scars on the skin of his poetry. By his own admission, God, sex, mythology, and spirituality are the themes of his lyrics.
On the other hand, his atavistic sensibility, apolitical and asocial, enriches itself with an important myth in the Jewish tradition, that of the “wandering Jew,” which undeniably projects itself along part of his human journey, giving an enchanting bohemian dimension to this solitary artist. This ‘mythical’ mobility converges with another kind of mobility, that belonging to the more traditional folk attitude:
‘To write books, one needs a place to reside permanently. (...) I decided to change course to become... a singer-songwriter.’ And again ‘The “real” songs pass from mouth to mouth without anything able to stop them. This is the nature of a song: to move incessantly...’
Cohen would therefore compose while paying close attention to the oral, transmissive possibilities inherent in ‘light’ music and thus choose a conversational and easily communicable storytelling format for himself.
I think he succeeded, how many guitars at this very moment linger over the arpeggio of Suzanne?
A singer-songwriter, then, who liked to think of himself as an author, yes popular, yet so authentically aristocratic that he put the distance of a thoroughly European spleen between himself and the other voices in America.
The opening track is Suzanne. A modern-day Dannunzian Barbara, "She who gives and forgives all," is the figure of a magnetic woman, sung about with a neutral and casual voice. This sensual protagonist fades, or perhaps immerses herself, into the image of a compassionate Jesus, brother to the men who drown.
The accompaniment is a prototype of Cohen's music, an elementary arpeggio inserted into an empty room, while violins and female voices seem to come from the courtyard just below.
The arpeggio of Master Song keeps a less lingering tempo, and the sonic events, rarefied at the beginning, recombine almost mechanically as the seconds pass.
This is music for underwater orchestras, as the sound reaches us muffled.
The third composition, Winter Lady, has the flavor of Donovan's best pieces. It resembles a watercolor painting of a bucolic, snow-covered landscape… one can tell it boasts a flute over which a second guitar overlaps. A piano, as usual locked in a jar, provides a counterpoint. It is one of the few lyrics that seem to be written by a non-professional, overall it is a divertissement for chronic depressives.
The singer-songwriter in the next song instead draws on all his expertise and his suggestive potential and offers us The Stranger Song. For this writer, the most beautiful guitar and voice piece on the LP. Cohen plays the arpeggio in a tight manner, almost in a trance, with metaphors, some of which are biblical, abound. The text undoubtedly betrays its origin independent of any musical accompaniment, thanks to the beauty of the images, the psychological complexity of the protagonist, and the pathos of the story.
Sisters of Mercy is a sweet serenade to the sisters of mercy for accordion, carillons, and guitar. Protectors of melancholy travelers without a destination, it is dedicated to souls that bear the weight of all mankind's sins. It is the perfect apology for all the Dostoevskian characters of the world, absolutely the most moving piece on the album.
Who is Marianne in the sixth song? She is the woman who spent over half a decade with Cohen, on the island of Hydra in Greece. Finally an extremely rhythmic love song, not arpeggiated at all. So Long Marianne, although so autobiographical, defines humble feelings of humble people, transparent in every word, with a dance-like tempo and female choirs on the chorus. Enriched by folk-rock accompaniment, it is the one closest to the records Cohen would create in the following season.
With Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, we return to the minimalistic atmospheres of the beginning of the record, with an arpeggio that meditates rather than narrates. Here the game becomes a bit more revealing. The verse-refrain is simple and somewhat anonymous, but it gets under your skin and doesn’t let go.
Teachers is a requiem sung with a pleading voice, a lament in which, in the folk-blues tradition, the singer draws doleful and resigned faces, cataloging their poverty and rhetorically wondering who teaches these men’s hearts. Narratively, it is reminiscent of pieces like ‘Oh Sweet Nuthin’’ by Reed and ‘La cattiva strada’ by De Andrè.
We would have liked it as a farewell from the record, but One of Us Cannot Be Wrong sneaks in, perhaps leaving us with a bit of regret, a bittersweet taste on our palate.
Cohen is the singer of silences and empty spaces. Confessor of the outcasts and observer of those invisible personal dramas forgotten by history and politics, of which in fact he will be artistically avulsed throughout his career. More Brel than Dylan, he elevated the narrative of folk to metaphysical meditation.
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