Leonard Cohen
Various Positions

THE REVIEW

Between "Recent Songs" and "Various Positions" five years pass: it's a considerable amount of time, and in the meantime, the landscape around Leonard Cohen has profoundly changed: we are in 1984, and "thanks" to the thematic channel MTV that appeared three years earlier, contemporary popular music, in the collective imagination, is beginning to become more about appearance and less about essence; characters are being imposed on an audience increasingly framed as a flock to lead and mold, becoming more and more divas, more models and icons in the most frivolous meanings of these terms and increasingly less artists; the artistic level of mainstream pop suffers a vertical collapse, from which it would never recover, gradually worsening into a maelstrom with no way out. Someone like Leonard Cohen really fits little with this new order of things; he has never been one to stand out on screen, always allowing his music to speak for itself: by avoiding artificial rock star poses and always remaining a correct, consistent artist faithful to himself and his principles, he has managed to become a cult figure, a guiding star for those who want to orient themselves in skies different from the one polluted by the smog and artificial lights of the anti-music imposed by the system, but in 1984 this is no longer enough: "Look, Leonard, we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good" is what he hears from the Columbia executives when he returns to the studio to follow up the masterpiece "Recent Songs."

Despite the senseless and obtuse ostracism of a musical establishment increasingly deaf and blind to music understood as an art form and not as a consumer product, "Various Positions" is Leonard Cohen's pop album par excellence: the turn that had already been attempted and partially failed seven years earlier with "Death Of A Ladie’s Man" is perfectly achieved here, thanks in part to the help of his friend producer John Lissauer, crucial with his contribution as arranger and keyboardist, and Jennifer Warnes, an increasingly important and defining presence, who is even credited as co-vocalist alongside Cohen himself. As the title suggests, the album is undoubtedly the most varied and eclectic in the songwriter's career: jazz, country, folk, and gospel influences are grafted onto a pop matrix, the atmospheres are lighter and more relaxed, more easily assimilated compared to those of "Recent Songs", and even this underlying simplicity contributes to making "Various Positions" a repository of unforgettable songs: thinking of Leonard Cohen one cannot help but think of "Hallelujah", an anthem of faith, love, and music. This song has been heavily used, in many cases outright abused, much to Cohen's displeasure, but for me the true "Hallelujah" remains the original: clear, joyful, serene, and not melodramatic at all, recited more than sung as befits such poetry, with the choristers, among whom the debutante Anjani Thomas stands out, intoning what is perhaps the most famous gospel chorus in contemporary popular music: practically full perfection achieved through style, measure, and inspiration, this is the original "Hallelujah", and this is the extreme synthesis of all "Various Positions", which boasts four other celebrated pillars of Leonard Cohen's repertoire: "Dance Me To The End Of Love", a tango that in its passionate theatricality places love as the last bastion against the barbarity of the human race, immortalized in all its essence in "Cohen Live" from 1993, the seductive love song "Coming Back To You" in which the poet, with a voice already slightly more hoarse than at the beginning, delivers an interpretation worthy of a great crooner, and the two tracks in which Jennifer Warnes' contribution is most evident: the intimate "Night Comes On", clothed in a delicate and dreamy atmosphere by John Lissauer's synthesizers, and the concluding "If It Be Your Will", a poignant yet liberating ballad, of simple and disarming beauty, where instead the supporting arrangements are more subdued compared to the rest of the album, leaving the stage to the voices of Leonard and Jennifer, in their second true duet after "The Smokey Life", accompanied by an acoustic guitar with a flamenco flavor.

In addition to these milestones, "Recent Songs" offers other pleasant surprises, tracks perhaps "minor" in an absolute sense but which well complete a concise and direct album, perfectly structured and virtually free of weak points: the dry and elusive "Hunter's Lullaby", a bitter portrait of a suicide, the hypnotic and tormented "The Law", embellished by the fascinating counterpoint of Jennifer Warnes, centered on the biblical concept of an implacable and inescapable divine law, and especially what to me is one of the most underrated songs in our repertoire: "The Captain": a very successful up-tempo country-western, with a prominent violin, with an easy and immediate melody, which behind its apparent carefreeness and disengagement hides a wonderful text, an ironic and poignant metaphor on the senselessness of wars, with references to the history of the Jewish people and a not too veiled satire on Yankie imperialism.

As Freddie Mercury rightly asserted, one must also know how to change and renew oneself if one wishes to continue being credible artists and not remain trapped in one's own clichés and become parodies of oneself, increasingly stilted and laughable as the years go by: now, good Freddie in his evolution has often lost his essence and could not avoid some falls of style, but Leonard Cohen did; he understood how to read the spirit of his times each time, continuing to renew himself with the same underlying message, the same honesty, the same lack of ulterior motives that are not about uniting music and poetry, trying to do it each time in the best way possible; this is Leonard Cohen, this is "Various Positions".