![]() ![]() Even in darkness - it's how the light gets in. After all, there is a crack in everything, as Cohen would say. Negativity ruptures under Cohen's hope, his humour, his elation and his genuine curiosity. It's all meant to service Cohen's lyrics and delivery, his voice rolling in like a distant thunder, deeper, both physically and spiritually, than ever before.Īnd yet, for all the darkness that permeates the album, there is absolutely no sense of dread. The arrangements are sparing but rich, from the elegant coos of a choir to haunting string progressions, or sometimes just a lonely guitar or electric piano with a barely there drumbeat. Throughout the nine songs on You Want it Darker, which was produced by his son, Adam Cohen, and composed with longtime collaborator Patrick Leonard, Cohen reflects on the same big questions to which he's devoted his life, but with the advantage of someone who can sense the end: "I'm travelling light, it's au revoir, my once so bright, my fallen star," he sings on "Travelling Light," a song that finds the joy in letting go. As the ailing 82-year-old accepts that, despite his best efforts, some questions will never be answered, we get to witness Cohen at his most vulnerable and vibrant. It's that signature straightforward, everyman approach to dealing with life's biggest questions - love, death and faith, sometimes all at the same time - that is on full display on You Want it Darker, one of the most inspired and poignant albums of his venerated career. "I am ready to die," he confessed in a recent New Yorker profile, Cohen never being the type of man to equivocate on such matters. The spectre of death looms large over Cohen's 14th album, and nowhere is this more apparent than here, from the ominous chants of Montreal's Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Choir to Cohen's own lyrical acceptance of his mortal limitations. 21), his trademark baritone mining the depths of his range, his lyrics the depths of his soul. ![]() "I'm ready my lord," crackles Leonard Cohen on the title track to You Want it Darker (available Oct. ![]()
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