Leonard Cohen

The tradition of the French chansonniers merges with existentialism and American folk in the work of Leonard Cohen, perhaps the greatest poet the singer-songwriter genre has ever produced. The protagonist of one of the latest recording debuts in rock history (at age 33), he had already made his name as a poet and writer before ever setting foot in a studio. He'd started singing and playing guitar as a boy, in a country & western trio, and at 22 had published his first collection of poetry, "Let Us Compare Mythologies" (1956). Arriving in New York at the height of the folk revival, with Dylan taking Greenwich Village by storm, Cohen came into contact with Judy Collins, who got him his debut at the Newport Festival. His talent didn't escape the notice of record man John Hammond, who offered him his first contract.

His debut album, released in December 1967, is about as far removed as one could imagine from the "revolutionary" mood of the era: while songwriters like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez waded into the political arena, Cohen retreated into the individual. His universe revolves around a series of "pairs": sex and religion (the very binomial on which Nick Cave would build a career, and what a career!), saint and disciple, sin and redemption, winner and loser, slave and master. And where Dylan's biblical tension is concerned, Cohen's version is more human and forgiving, though no less "apocalyptic".

A native of Montreal, the French-speaking city of Canada, Cohen is also the most "European" of the overseas singer-songwriters. His repertoire, as noted, is a child of the French chanson of Jacques Brel and George Brassens, but also of a peculiar fondness for biblical themes (strongly influenced here by his Jewish roots, as is his black, vaguely Yiddish humor) and for classical mythology. A bard of melancholy, loneliness, marginalization and lost loves, Cohen probes the "heart of darkness" of humanity, composing a fresco of aching lyricism. His ten "Songs" strike the listener immediately with their delicacy of touch, their hushed, romantic tone, and the deeply intimate dimension that pervades them. These are love ballads in which pain, loss, fear, guilt and loneliness are admitted without shame and without mercy - ballads built on bare arrangements and moving melodies.

The album opens right away with the enchanting "Suzanne", destined to become the archetypal standard of the Cohen-style ballad, later covered by Fabrizio De André (his finest disciple alongside Nick Cave). It's a song of extraordinary elegance, dominated by the Montreal songwriter's deep register, which instills a boundless sense of tenderness. Contrary to popular belief, "Suzanne" wasn't born as a poem set to music - as Cohen himself revealed, it was conceived and written as a song from the start, and only later published in a poetry collection. The protagonist is the sole lifeline, the object of a supernatural devotion: "And you want to travel with her/ And you want to travel blind/ And you know that you can trust her/ For she's touched your perfect body with her mind". A mythical figure, then, though inspired by visits to the home of Suzanne Verdal, a dancer, and her husband, the well-known sculptor Armand Vaillancourt. There was no sexual involvement, in any case: Cohen stated he never had a relationship with Suzanne, and that the song blended elements of reality with imagination. Having first met Suzanne in Montreal, Cohen had already drawn inspiration from her for poems published in "Parasites of Heaven" (1966), among them the future lyrics of the song, then titled "Suzanne Takes You Down". Cohen quietly narrates his fairy tale, framed by tender (classical) guitar arpeggios, moaning violin and angelic female choruses, in a delicate interweaving of biblical imagery and dream, spirituality and carnal desire.

The sinister atmospheres of "Master Song", with prominent horns and keyboard reverb lurking in the background, must have taught Nick Cave and his many imitators of the Nineties a great deal. The slave-master dichotomy is read here as a continuous reversal of roles: for Cohen, there is always glory and light in defeat ("Beautiful Loser" would be the title of one of his novels), and often the differences between the defeated and the victorious cancel each other out. The tone turns even softer and warmer on the slow "Winter Lady", a melody for flute and harpsichord, while "The Stranger Song" unveils that classical guitar arpeggio - just a few chords, yet dizzyingly fast - that would become a Cohen trademark (Fabrizio De André would achieve something similar on "Amico Fragile").

The combination of the voice, whispering with the delicacy of a medieval minstrel, and the finely arpeggiated classical guitar, is flawless. That pairing alone is enough to cast a magic spell over "Sisters Of Mercy", another dreamlike ballad poised between a lullaby and a religious psalm - even though its protagonists are prostitutes: "They lay down beside me/ I made my confession to them/ They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem/ If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn/ they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem". Around the voice-guitar axis, other sounds surface: flashes of accordion, tinkling bells, chimes of xylophone. It's the song that gave its name to one of the "darkest" bands in rock history: the British Sisters Of Mercy, led by Andrew Eldritch.

A perfect crooner in jacket and tie, just as on the cover, Cohen never loses his composure. Not even when the music picks up pace, as in the sweeping serenade of "So Long, Marianne", with drums and violin lending a hand to his singing. Not even when it's time to say goodbye, as in the country-tinged ballad "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye". And not even when he walks the streets among the desperate souls of "Stories Of The Street", where he lays himself bare with fierce realism: "The stories of the street are mine, the Spanish voices laugh/ The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas/ and I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose/ yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose".

The calm, detached delivery of this courteous storyteller contrasts with the vehement style of so many folksingers, past and present. And his underlying tension, his cosmic pessimism, his latent neurosis, bring him closer to the "cursed" songwriting of Lou Reed and Jim Morrison than to the "peace & love" utopianism of so many songwriters of the era. This is confirmed by the somber parable of "Teachers" and the icy "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong", which close the album on a note of contrite sorrow.

One of the most influential albums of all time, "Songs Of Leonard Cohen" is a lesson in how to achieve maximum dramatic impact with the barest minimum of arrangement. The landscape is stark, cold, wintry: a great void populated by ghosts wandering aimlessly, or even "by mistake" ("Some girls wander by mistake" in "Teachers"). And yet, amid so much desolation, emotion lurks around every corner, ready to catch you off guard and strike straight at the heart. Because Cohen, the minstrel with the razor-blade voice, knows how to penetrate the darkest recesses of the soul, how to crack open the bitter shell of loneliness and lay bare the intimacy of feeling. His "Songs" of 1968 (and many more to come) stand as the most devastating proof of it.

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29/10/2006