Leonard Cohen - 'Songs from a Room' (Columbia)

OK, so I have a few Leonard Cohen LPs ahead and I don't really know how to write about them. (What a copout vibe these pages have been taking lately!). Of course this stuff is timeless and there's nothing I can add to it. This one isn't my absolute favorite but it's still beyond criticism. I don't have the first LP for some reason but this is the same exact formula, except with a jew's harp added. All I can really talk about is moments I had in my own life with it; this particular LP, this copy even, I grabbed secondhand when I was 16 or 17 and I remember listening to it with a girlfriend (or whatever passes for a girlfriend at that age) and somehow 'Story of Isaac' set the mood for, well, y'know. And for all the acclaim of that song, it's greatest element to me is how sparse it is - a stumbling bassline, the barest accents of guitar parts (usually just two or three repeated notes) and the barely audible but ever present jew's harp. As stern as Len's final warning is, it holds back from grandiose drama; that's saved for 'A Bunch of Quarrelsome Heroes', with frantically strummed chords and a soaring voice. He sings it for the crickets and the army, though. It's silly to even say these songs are retreads of the first record because this is a poet who embraced songwriting afterall, and I already said this was beyond criticism. 'The Partisan' inaugurates the great tradition of military imagery in Cohen songs, and I love this one. It's not for the chilling, female-backed French chorus, but for the rapid yet light fingerpicking, the song again driven by a few bass notes. There's an intensity that somehow is convincing enough that I've always accepted this Montreal poet singing as if he's actually in a war - and it's a cover version. Now Songs from a Room is my least favourite of the big four, by which I refer to Cohen's infallible first four albums. But despite being in fourth place this is still pretty damn solid. I love it less because of few droopy tunes that never resonated with me - 'Seems So Long Ago, Nancy', 'Lady Midnight' and I guess 'The Butcher'. What I've learned with Leonard Cohen over the years is that his music develops with me. As I age, I find new things in it and the songwriting becomes more personal and meaningful - which is the exact opposite of just about everything else I've ever listened to. This explains why I still listen to Cohen now as I did at 17, and why I don't listen the Smoking Popes anymore. So I'm sure in ten more years 'Lady Midnight' will make a boatload of sense to me, the same way that 17-year-old me dismissed Death of a Lady's Man and the 30 year old me fell in love with it.