Album Reviews

Leonard Cohen, the enduring romantic, recorded his debut album appropriately enough, in the waning days of the “summer of love,” in August of 1967. By then he was in his 30’s and capable of expressing his views of love and intimacy in refreshingly sophisticated and sometimes indelibly bleak terms.

By the time he tried his hand at music he’d been a published poet and novelist and while you couldn’t look him up on Wikipedia back in 1967, you didn’t have to, to know Cohen wrote from experience.

Listening to Cohen sing “Suzanne” when you’re twenty was to realize that perhaps what you really wanted was to “travel blind,” led around by the likes of Suzanne instead of indulging in the usual rock fantasy of dragging around some fawning, will-free, arm candy.

If ever an album cried out for an all-analog reissue it’s Leonard Cohen’s lush, atmospheric 1967 debut skillfully produced and musically arranged by John Simon whose delicate task was to cushion Cohen’s drab, flat croaky voice in an involving backdrop without overwhelming it.

Simon placed Cohen and his classical guitar in warm atmospherics, pushing the bottom end to where Cohen’s “p” and “b” sounds sometimes popped the microphone, punctuating the flow and drone with deft, percussive musical signposts that appear as ghostly apparitions out of the musical mist.

I’ve never heard a 16 bit digital edition of this recording nor do I want to. It can’t possibly do it justice.

Cohen’s basic but sturdy and ultimately enduring melodies accompany uncomfortably intimate, romantic lyrics. Lots of “body” talk and undressing and more body talk and worshipping bodies and Jesus and subservience and dominance and ruined thighs and bread and wine and religious symbolism and being held onto like a crucifix.

Man, to encounter Leonard Cohen as a teenager was and is to have your world turned inside out, which helps explain why the guy endures into his 70s and continues to reach adoring young audiences of lovers and dreamers, much as Nick Drake does in death.

Cohen paints dark, intimate, mysterious pictures dripping with heavy imagery. John Simon’s production has him singing from a dimly lit corner illuminated in short bursts by bell-toned percussion, mellifluous strings, an electric bass, velvet-muted trumpets and the like, and especially by a female background singer who sounds barely of age, who occasionally lights up Cohen’s darkest images to produce an ironic contrast. No wonder this record remains mysterious and timeless forty plus years later.

Sundazed’s vinyl reissue sounds about as close to the original as is possible. It’s ever so slightly darker, which does nothing but increase the deep atmospherics without harming the glistening shafts of light John Simon ingeniously projects into the dark setting.

Over the years, I’ve found that as my system improves, the more the production subtleties reveal themselves. What sounded like a very spare picture turns out to be far more than that which immediately meets the ear.

As is typical of these modestly priced Sundazed reissues, there’s a bit of “non-fill” noise for the first half a minute or so and then it’s all silence, which is good because this record simply cannot put up with any noise if it’s to work its magic.

If you’re unfamiliar, you should give this a shot. It’s among the best late night listening experiences you can have. Just blow out the candle before retiring.