2016: You Want It Darker - Leonard Cohen

Looking back at 30 years of music | Leonard Cohen

I wrote here a while ago about how there are some artists that you discover too soon. You find them before you’re ready for them. Who you hear for the first time and know that they are great, but feel that you aren’t in a place to fully appreciate or understand their work just yet. Where you know you need to go away, live a little longer and go through a little more before you can come back and gain access to the songs.

Fiona Apple was one for me. Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits were, too. I could hear that they were all geniuses on the first listen, but I didn’t have the experience or knowledge yet to fully appreciate how and why.

Leonard Cohen was another one where I needed to go away and do some work of my own before his work would reveal itself to me. Like everyone, I have always loved songs like Suzanne and So Long, Marianne but I knew that there was something out of my reach about the rest of his work whenever I tried to listen and gain access to it. Every now and then I’d try again, maybe with Songs From a Room or Songs of Love and Hate but each time I did, the music would turn away from me.

I was 18 when Cohen played in London for the final time. His music and lyrics still hadn’t let me in just yet but I should have gone, anyway. Seeing him in person felt like the right thing to do, and I could have just about scratched around for enough money for a ticket, but in the end I didn’t go. “I’ll see him next time, when it finally all makes sense to me.”

I’ve got two regrets in life, now. The first one is not seeing Leonard Cohen live. The other one is not being Leonard Cohen.

Cohen released You Want It Darker on October 21, 2016 to rave reviews. Earlier that month, he had been the subject of an incredible, must-read profile in the New Yorker from David Remnick. Having read the article and some reviews for the new album, I felt like it was time to try again and really listen. So, on my way to work on Monday 7th November, I pulled You Want It Darker up on Spotify and listened. When it finished, I took a breath and went back to the start and listened again.

These songs were revelatory. You Want It Darker, Treaty, On the Level, If I Didn’t Have Your Love, Traveling Light, It Seemed the Better Way, Steer Your Way, String Reprise / Treaty. The album was monumental. It felt like a religious experience to listen to it. Like an awakening of some spiritual place deep within me to finally hear this music. I made it to the office in a daze, before the end of the second run through of the album, so I waited outside the doors with my earphones in to finish listening the final songs before going inside.

Over the next couple of days I didn’t listen to anybody else. Only Leonard Cohen would do. I gorged and feasted on his music and lyrics. I listened in the morning and the night to see how the songs would have a different effect at different times of day. I listened to songs from Death of a Ladies’ Man and The Future. Songs from Various Positions and I’m Your Man. Songs from Old Ideas and Popular Problems. I listened at work and on the bus. At home and walking on the street. It all became clear to me, the great mysteries had unravelled and I had penetrated the very core of things. I stumbled upon the answer. It all made sense now. It all clicked into place. Finally.

On November 11, the news broke that Leonard Cohen had died at the age of 82. By the time that the announcement was made Cohen’s burial ceremony had already taken place and he had been gone for a few days, having fallen in the night and passed away in the early hours of November 7th.

I’d waited all my life to really listen to Leonard Cohen - to feel and understand and appreciate and connect with the work - and at precisely the time that everything was becoming clearer to me, revealing the layers and depths that I couldn’t ever reach before, he was moving on to the next place. Traveling light.

It doesn’t get much darker than that.

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Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Anthem, 1992

You want it darker
We kill the flame

You Want It Darker, 2016

A lot was made of the prophetic imagery used by David Bowie in his final album, Blackstar in 2016. “Look up here, I’m in Heaven” took on a whole new weight when heard after his passing. So too, does the hymnal “Hineni, hineni / I’m ready, my Lord” Hebrew refrain from Leonard Cohen’s titular album opener You Want It Darker.

But death and darkness had been ever-present in his work since his very first album. Cohen was always ready; prepared to leave us on a prescient note whenever the time finally came, but he stuck with us and stuck by us long enough to leave us with this truly beautiful, truly devastating parting shot.

There are plenty of instances across the album that can be seen to reference The End or pored over to find their deeper meanings (“I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game” or Traveling Light, for instance. Cohen knows that you can’t take it all with you when you go, and that you don’t travel any lighter than you do on your final journey) but the thing that strikes me more than any of the lyrics, even, if the sound and feel of this album.

Not since New Skin for the Old Ceremony in 1974 had a Leonard Cohen record sounded this polished. Had the instrumentation been this rich. Most of his best writing had come in the years in between, but I often found that the production values of a lot of Cohen’s albums let his lyrics, his voice and his arrangements down. Some, like I’m Your Man, worked incredibly well for the songs, but despite all its charm and obvious genius of the album, the Casio sounds on that particular release can come across as a little dated on your first listen.

You Want It Darker never will. This is a timeless album, and the music is given the level of reverence that Cohen deserves. It empowers the grace and the grit in the words to have an extra impact. It is a great credit to Cohen’s son Adam, who produced the album, that all of these songs would tell his father’s stories and almost have as much impact as instrumentals as they do with the words (and that deep, resonant - and deeply resonant - voice).

And it’s not just timeless. It is beautiful. It’s heartbreaking. It’s reverent and reaching for the highest stars. It is everything. It doesn’t have any dead weight or fat on it - there isn’t time to waste any breath on anything but the best - but it also doesn’t have a singular standout track which unbalances the rest of the songs or throws the the album out of whack. Rather, it spreads its magic out across each of the nine songs. There are no words or notes out of place. I think more than just an album, this is a finely crafted piece of art, and a masterpiece in the truest sense of the word.

It is truly the culmination of Cohen’s hard work through the ages. Every line that he fought so hard to perfect in his life is here; every feeling and emotion and memory and longing or wish. This is really a perfect album. It’s the perfect sign off from the perfect gentleman, the perfect songwriter and takes up residence right at the very top of the Tower of Song.

In these songs, you’ll find both life and death. You’ll find darkness and light. Love, lust and loss. You’ll be moved and you’ll be changed. You’ll come out the other side better than when you went in. Maybe in here you’ll find G-d. I didn’t, but in this album I did find Leonard Cohen, and, to me, that’s just as spiritually rewarding.

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Notable album releases…

Angel Olsen - My Woman

David Bowie - Blackstar

Beyoncé - Lemonade

Bob Dylan - Fallen Angels

Bruno Mars - 24k Magic

Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book

Frank Ocean - Blonde

Lady Gaga - Joanne

The Rolling Stones - Blue & Lonesome

Whitney - Light Upon the Lake

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I was speaking to the author, poet and host of Writers Read Their Early Sh*t, Jason Emde recently. He asked if I could only listen to one out of Bob Dylan, Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen for the rest of my life, who would I pick?

We both agreed that Dylan is the obvious choice due to his sheer body of work. He has the longest career out of the options; the most albums to listen to and the most variety in his sound and style. But for what the music meant to him, Jason eventually went for Tom Waits.

It’s an impossible pick, and one I’m glad that none of us really have to make, but if push came to shove, I’d probably have to go for Leonard Cohen. I could live without Like a Rolling Stone or Most of the Time if I absolutely had to, but how could you survive the rest of your life without ever hearing Leaving the Table, Who By Fire or The Hills again?

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Next up: Hurray for Hurray for the Riff Raff

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