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Rating:
Exorcising ghosts from the human mind, forcing them out of their darkest hiding places to be exposed, in order to capture them in meticulous, ruthlessly realistic musical portraits, without smoothing over the humps, without omitting the most horrible details. This too is an art, and far from easy, starting with the technique to use. Some think that exploring the perverse side of our soul only requires a picturesque kit of diabolic symbols (more or less decomposed corpses, more or less Celtic crosses, 666 and other oddities), all accompanied by the racket of distorted guitars, beastly shouts, and wild drums. I don't think it's the right path, and after all, Oscar Wilde in his amusing story "The Canterville Ghost" taught us that spirits hate noise and flee from it. It's more likely that they are attracted by the sound of a cavernous, sweetly tired and disillusioned voice, along with a guitar that accompanies with sparse, mournful bell-like chords. But even this isn't enough. The most important condition is still missing: that this voice belongs to a poet. Leonard Cohen is one, in both the literal (or literary) sense, and as an author of some of the most expressive and profound lyrics ever set to music.
And his third album, "Songs Of Love And Hate" (1971) is no exception; if anything, it represents the nadir of his tormenting psychological exploration, the most dangerously close point to the brink of total despair. The "black" album of the great Canadian poet is a disconcerting gallery of degraded human situations, so much so that even the only heroine present, Joan of Arc ("Joan Of Arc") is so only in name. In reality, she is a woman now resigned, tired of war and a victim of the role she has played so far, tired even of life, who in a last impulse of vitality gives herself to the fire with the same passion she would give to a lover. We are far from that tragedy of the senses that overwhelms "Nancy" from the previous record, and even more so from those vivid and indelible colors that make the figure of the hypersensitive "Suzanne" from the debut album fascinating. In any case, even "Joan Of Arc", like the other two Cohen female icons, struck Fabrizio De André, who knew how to translate her in his unique way. Leonard Cohen knows how to get the most from his essential instrumentation. Take the start of "Avalanche" ("Valanga"): the guitar strings, nervously plucked, vibrate like the electric cables of a railway before the train arrives. A climate of tremulous anticipation is created, accentuated by the deep lament of the strings, and finally more than satisfied by the genuine avalanche of confessions and regrets that Cohen's harsh voice unloads on the defenseless listener, right up to the final verses, deadly in their total rejection of any pity: "Do not dress in rags for me, I know you are not poor; and do not love me so fiercely, when you know you are not sure...". Enough to unsettle an economist’s sensitivity.
The same frenetic plucking animates "Love Calls You By Your Name", but here at least the lyrics offer some solace, thanks to the chorus line ("Love calls you by your name"), a dim but unexpected ray of sunshine closing each stanza. It's no coincidence that such guitar tremors will later provide the backdrop first to the most touching confession-text ever written by Fabrizio De André ("Amico fragile"), and much later to his most apocalyptic picture of the current world ("La domenica delle salme"). But we have still not reached the abyss of unhappiness. "Last Year’s Man" and "Dress Rehearsal Rag", mercilessly sequenced, achieve this several times. The first is a haunting sequence of images of material and human decay: "Last year’s man" lives in a place that is the very symbol of his degradation ("The skylight is like a drum’s skin I will never patch"), and from here he lucidly retraces the steps of his downfall without lifting a finger to prevent it. Initially, voice and guitar wallow in the mire of long dolorous notes, then the ballad gains just enough animation to drag itself forward somehow. In "Dress Rehearsal Rag", the desperation is even more pressing: Cohen’s voice seems to oppose the infinite sadness of the music with a certain anger, but with a chilling tone, making one fear at any moment the outbreak of an irrepressible sobbing. As if that were not enough, at the end of each stanza, one must reckon with the rhetorical question: "Has it or hasn’t it been a long decline, a strange decline?" while eventually facing the chilling truth that all this decline is nothing more than "a dress rehearsal in rags" for something else that will inevitably come... ("Cheer up!", Mike Bongiorno would say).
One recovers (relatively) with "Diamonds In The Mine", a pre-Waitsian hybrid of deranged reggae and spiritual choruses, and "Sing Another Song, Boys", immersed in a similar climate of a drunken, ramshackle party, the only cheerfulness Cohen is able to offer us. But the quintessential "song of love and hate" is "Famous Blue Raincoat". The immense tenderness of its beautiful singable theme manages to tear for a while the black and gloomy veil that covers much of the album. Under the "famous blue raincoat," naturally "torn at the shoulder," hides a friend-enemy, both betrayer and betrayed, to whom Leonard Cohen, on a sleepless December night, writes perhaps the sincerest and most passionate letter ever set to music. The two friends-enemies share a deep relationship with the same woman, but at least Leonard is so overwhelmed by the weight of those distant memories that he doesn't know if he misses the ex-friend ("my brother, my killer"), not being able to forgive or punish him, but only to say "if you ever come by here, for Jane or for me, I want you to know your enemy is sleeping; I want you to know that her woman is free", with the same tone with which he sketches the neutral backdrop of the story, a cold New York but full of music until late at night.
What else is there to say? That the only ones who might be discouraged from such a masterpiece, for obvious reasons, are the depressed. Otherwise, just a warm invitation to read the lyrics: with Leonard Cohen, it's always worth it.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Avalanche (05:01)
Well I stepped into an avalanche,
it covered up my soul;
when I am not this hunchback that you see,
I sleep beneath the golden hill.
You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn, learn to serve me well.
You strike my side by accident
as you go down for your gold.
The cripple here that you clothe and feed
is neither starved nor cold;
he does not ask for your company,
not at the centre, the centre of the world.
When I am on a pedestal,
you did not raise me there.
Your laws do not compel me
to kneel grotesque and bare.
I myself am the pedestal
for this ugly hump at which you stare.
You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn what makes me kind;
the crumbs of love that you offer me,
they're the crumbs I've left behind.
Your pain is no credential here,
it's just the shadow, shadow of my wound.
I have begun to long for you,
I who have no greed;
I have begun to ask for you,
I who have no need.
You say you've gone away from me,
but I can feel you when you breathe.
Do not dress in those rags for me,
I know you are not poor;
you don't love me quite so fiercely now
when you know that you are not sure,
it is your turn, beloved,
it is your flesh that I wear.
03 Dress Rehearsal Rag (06:05)
Four o'clock in the afternoon
and I didn't feel like very much.
I said to myself, "Where are you golden boy,
where is your famous golden touch?"
I thought you knew where
all of the elephants lie down,
I thought you were the crown prince
of all the wheels in Ivory Town.
Just take a look at your body now,
there's nothing much to save
and a bitter voice in the mirror cries,
"Hey, Prince, you need a shave."
Now if you can manage to get
your trembling fingers to behave,
why don't you try unwrapping
a stainless steel razor blade?
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?
There's no hot water
and the cold is running thin.
Well, what do you expect from
the kind of places you've been living in?
Don't drink from that cup,
it's all caked and cracked along the rim.
That's not the electric light, my friend,
that is your vision growing dim.
Cover up your face with soap, there,
now you're Santa Claus.
And you've got a gift for anyone
who will give you his applause.
I thought you were a racing man,
ah, but you couldn't take the pace.
That's a funeral in the mirror
and it's stopping at your face.
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
ah wasn't it a strange way down?
Once there was a path
and a girl with chestnut hair,
and you passed the summers
picking all of the berries that grew there;
there were times she was a woman,
oh, there were times she was just a child,
and you held her in the shadows
where the raspberries grow wild.
And you climbed the twilight mountains
and you sang about the view,
and everywhere that you wandered
love seemed to go along with you.
That's a hard one to remember,
yes it makes you clench your fist.
And then the veins stand out like highways,
all along your wrist.
And yes it's come to this,
it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?
You can still find a job,
go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
there are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the Rosicrucians,
they can give you back your hope,
you can find your love with diagrams
on a plain brown envelope.
But you've used up all your coupons
except the one that seems
to be written on your wrist
along with several thousand dreams.
Now Santa Claus comes forward,
that's a razor in his mit;
and he puts on his dark glasses
and he shows you where to hit;
and then the cameras pan,
the stand in stunt man,
dress rehearsal rag,
it's just the dress rehearsal rag,
you know this dress rehearsal rag,
it's just a dress rehearsal rag.
06 Famous Blue Raincoat (05:10)
It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.
I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.
Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?
Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene
And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife.
Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake --
She sends her regards.
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.
If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.
And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Sincerely L. Cohen
08 Joan of Arc (06:21)
Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
as she came riding through the dark;
no moon to keep her armour bright,
no man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, "I'm tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
a wedding dress or something white
to wear upon my swollen appetite."
Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way,
you know I've watched you riding every day
and something in me yearns to win
such a cold and lonesome heroine.
"And who are you?" she sternly spoke
to the one beneath the smoke.
"Why, I'm fire," he replied,
"And I love your solitude, I love your pride."
"Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,"
saying this she climbed inside
to be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and high above the wedding guests
he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.
It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?
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Other reviews
By paolofreddie
An album that delves into the depths of the human soul, winding through the mazes of the human psyche.
Songs of Love and Hate represents a decisive step in the Canadian artist’s career, a leap in quality compared to the past.
