Mortality coloured much of Leonard Cohen’s work but there was an unmistakable finality to You Want It Darker, the album released shortly before his death in 2016.
It makes this record’s arrival all the more unexpected. Cohen had asked his son Adam to complete a number of early sketches — something which removes the morbid opportunism often associated with posthumous releases, leaving us a faithful closing statement.
Cohen Jr writes music for all but two of the tracks and ably mimics his father’s hallmarks, such as the flamenco guitars, which flutter throughout. Some arrangements lack adventure, but when you hear Cohen’s formidable voice and words, the tentative deference makes sense.
His blackened vocal is transfixing, largely without melody but heavy with the weight of long life. His lyrical mind is nimble as ever. “In the prison of the gifted, I was friendly with the guards,” he growls on Happens to the Heart. He reminisces on The Hills: “My page was too white, my ink was too thin/The day wouldn’t write what the night pencilled in.”
Amid Cohen’s wry melancholy, the most enduring line is his simplest: “Thanks for the dance/It was hell, it was swell, it was fun.”
Leonard Cohen - in pictures
