0241. Leonard Cohen
Songs Of Love And Hate
Leonard Cohen's back again and this time it's a different sound: Not that the vocals or the lyrics are other than, well, intensly, but the musical setting is generally better here than on the eighties-flavoured I'm Your Man.
Songs Of Love And Hate is based on two things: Cohens voice and acoustic guitar.
The rest is merely ornamentation which, for the most part, works damn good. The reggae/country of Diamonds In The Mine, however, feels a bit off, and combined with Cohens voice going from deep baritone to plain guttural it doesn't really stroke my eardrums as the other songs do.
Listen instead to the previous song, Dress Rehearsal Rag, which is a magnificent downer (fact: also it' a track reportedly only played live twice - before this album was released) or, for that matter, the final song: Joan Of Arc. A tiny sliver of magic put to words.
