You Want It Darker (Columbia/Sony): Or how, at 81 years old, on the verge of darkness, Leonard Cohen wrote an album that others would not be able to imagine, even in seven lifetimes.
“We have reached the point where we are so old, our bodies are falling apart, and I think I will join you soon. Know that I am so close behind you, that if you stretch out your hand you can reach mine (…) I just want to wish you a very beautiful journey. Goodbye my old friend. My eternal love. See you at the end of the road.” When he wrote this farewell letter to Marianne Ilhendied on July 29 following leukemia, Leonard Cohen had undoubtedly already finished this fourteenth album. One of the most beautiful.
“I’m ready, my Lord.”
You Want It Darker opens with one of Cohen’s great classics, immediate and indisputable. Deep choirs, a metallic rhythm, an organ in the background, a melody that embeds itself deep in our pores, hollowing out our stomachs. Then the voice from beyond the grave of Leonard Cohen: “I’m ready, my Lord.” Should we recite Kaddish, as he suggests here? Listing the “If you want…”, “You Want It Darker” turns out to be a deadly response to the legendary “I’m Your Man”. A response which resonates with the title “Leaving The Table” where, contrary to what the mischievous Cohen of 1988 proposed, today’s one asserts: “I don’t need a partner / I don’t need a lover”. But we don’t believe it for a second.
In “Treaty”, with distant jazzy sounds, where Cohen explains ghost stories to his lover – those who remain from their union. The gospel choirs of “On The Level” underline the story of a man battered by the questions of Truth, Good and Evil – those which, perhaps, arise most often for the Canadian. “If You Didn’t Have Your Love” is a bluesy ballad, whose rapid cavernous guitar solo breaks the heart: no matter what we are, if the Other is not there, nothing is worth living. This is followed by a return to the roots of “Traveling Light”, typically Cohenian: powerful Lilith choirs, violins on the roof of Yiddish-land. An incantation enhanced with strings of almost demonic elegance, “It Seemed The Better Way” demonstrates all the narrative poetry of the singer, who accepts his errors, his lies, his small victories and his great loves while facing the immensity of the void which lies at his feet. Finally, he offers us a life lesson of 4 minutes 23, the intense “Steer Your Way”.
In Jewish tradition, when one’s name is Cohen, one is entrusted with a mission: that of ensuring prayers and the proper conduct of rites, at the synagogue or during religious events. By producing his father’s album, Adam Cohen reinvests this tradition while extending a very strong bond, which we feel physically throughout the eight songs of You Want It Darker. The crystalline purity of the sound he crafted is the most beautiful setting he could offer to Leonard’s music. The voice of the latter stands out, through the darkness of his texts: always more serious, sublimated by his heir. As a coda, the instrumental version of “Treaty”, where only strings are expressed, brings tears to the eyes. It’s simple and profound, recalling this injunction that we heard in the album I’m Your Man: “Take this waltz, take this waltz / With its ‘I’ll never forg and you, you know!’” (“Take this waltz, take this waltz / With its ‘I’ll never forget you, you know!’”)
Let’s dance with Leonard Cohen, until love ends. Until the very end.
