Leonard Cohen

The off-kilter mix of folk instrumentation, rock swagger and Cohen's lyrical content ensured this didn't receive a lick of airplay in 1974, but it holds up as one of Cohen's best LPs. It contains a number of his most enduring -- and endearing -- songs: "A Singer Must Die," "Lover, Lover, Lover," "Who By Fire" and best of all, the doomed romance of "Chelsea Hotel #2."

"Myself," claims Leonard Cohen, "I long for love and light/But must it come so cruel and oh
so bright?" In Cohen's monochromatic, endgame world, where Scott Fitzgerald's famous "In
a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning ..." could pass for one
of the rules of the game, the answer is almost always yes, the truth almost always yes, the
truth almost always cruel and bright. And, not willing to leave it at that, the singe... More >

That miraculously intimate voice has become more expressive and confident over the years without losing its beguiling flat amateurishness. Some of the new songs are less than memorable, but the settings, by John Lissauer, have the bizarre feel of John Simon's "overproduction" on Cohen's first album, which I always believed suited his studied vulgarity perfectly. (Grade - A-)