Review: Leonard Cohen – ‘Old Ideas’

Leonard Cohen knows that’s a very sneaky title to use at this stage of his career. Offering us the knife and showing us where best to stab him in the back, you might expect most who hear this album to proffer an embarrassed “Oh no, not at all Len, it’s dynamic and exciting, what are you talking about?”

He chose the title. He knows what kind of music he’s made, and beating us to saying it aloud doesn’t make it any less true. So do not expect dynamic or exciting ideas here. Now you know that, the next few paragraphs should go a little easier. Actually, this is only his twelfth studio album. Strange to realise that of a singer/songwriter who’s been doing this since the mid ‘60s.

Less strange is the realisation that these songs tip Cohen’s singer/poet persona very much in the latter’s favour. He’s not singing so much as he is speaking lyrically. Like Dylan or Waits, a lifetime of smoking and hard living has eroded the man’s voice away into a sort of rumbling, raspy croak. Cohen never pretended to be a star vocalist, but that’s just fine by us. He’s 78 years old, and there’s more character and depth in his crackly whisper than half the warbly singers sitting at the toppermost of the poppermost.

So what’s he whispering about? Sex, love, religion, death. Small talk for this guy. ‘Going Home‘, an eloquently worded self-portrait, is nonetheless a bit of a sputtering start to an erratic sort of record. ‘Darkness‘ is another stumble, trying for a 12 bar blues and not quite getting there. Later on, he goes for a hymnal approach with ‘Come Healing‘. The backing singers practically carry the song, making it feel disappointingly hokey. That tactic worked back in the eighties with ‘First We Take Manhattan‘, but that was an infinitely more dynamic arrangement, with a far stronger refrain than some guff about a ‘penitential hymn’.

‘Show Me The Place‘ is more like what we were promised from ‘Old Ideas’. It sounds as if he’s woken up slumped in a doorway, with a bottle in his hand that’s got more rainwater than wine left in it. So it’s fitting that the arrangements here are loose and spartan. This and ‘Crazy To Love You‘ are perhaps the triumphs of this brave method. Simple piano lines on the former and fingerpicked nylon-string guitar on the latter find solace and magic in the clever use of silence. Silence is Cohen’s canvas, and he’s sketched out just the right kind of curves to suggest a far greater potential beauty.

It’s not all faint sketches in the dust; ‘Banjo‘ is a nicely coloured-in country blues, all tasty slide guitar licks and brief cornet flourishes. ‘Different Sides‘ is the only time you feel the need to shuffle your feet, rambling along at an infectious pace. The bass thumps and beats and moves with the drums for once; organ and piano tease one another, it’s all starting to come together…and then ‘Old Ideas’ is over. That was the last track.

The notion of this record, music for the morning after, could’ve been realised. It wasn’t beyond the grasp of Leonard Cohen to make a truly sublime record, something that wouldn’t seem out of place standing in for that King Curtis record Paul McGann sticks on in the opening moments of Withnail & I to help him come to terms with it being daylight again.

‘Old Ideas’ isn’t such a bad album. It’s all about expectations, really. Cohen’s name carries a lot of weight, and most who do know the name haven’t heard much beyond ‘Suzanne‘ or ‘Hallelujah‘. If you’re waiting for another ‘Bird on a Wire’, tough luck, juggins.

Go in expecting rain like Dylan’s fans do, and you may like it.

(Simon Moore)