Monotonous melancholic and Canadian Poet is back

You Got Me Singing Leonard Cohen

Just in time for his 80th birthday on September 21, 2014, the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen announces legend with his 13th studio album Popular problem back. It appears two years after Old Ideas, the most commercially successful album of his career at all. In eight countries, so he landed at number one on the charts in Germany at number four and eighteen other at least in the top five.

For Popular problem Cohen has collaborated again with songwriting partner and producer Patrick Leonard. The recording and mixing took Jesse E. String. Whether the album will outdo the precursor remains to be seen. The nine songs fill just 36 minutes and yet no way around at this late work.

Heiser, rough, velvety: Leonard Cohen's monotonous melancholy voice is unique and draws inevitably its spell. A turning a deaf ear or the way listening is not possible: voice and lyrics deserve, yes, require full concentration and bind attention if thoughtful, ambiguous texts on major themes such as war, love or faith over the ears in one's thoughts sneak.

The album lives from deep content lyrics and the laconic of the poet who is a master, to bring things to the point and short at the same time pronouncing all the essentials and yet to leave the room for interpretation. The opening Slow Blues "here lead the way: I always liked it slow, I never liked it almost / With you it's gotta go, with me it's gotta last."

Self-deprecating and pregnant with meaning against acts be related to bad reviews of his works: "There's torture and killing there's / there's all my bad reviews / The war, the children missing / Lord, it's almost like the blues." Songs like these can be heard again and again. And again and again at a profit.

Overall, the musical accompaniment falls gratifying understated and minimalist: They accompanied and supported. In the foreground, but is always the poetry of the lyrics in connection with Cohen's unique timbre. What still affects your listening pleasure, is the background choir. So the melancholic atmosphere is broken by Mainstreaming-brisk Country tooting around in Did I Ever Love You. Too bad.

There is throughout the album only one title which manages vocals of Charlean Carmon, Donna Delory and Dana Glover without the backing: You Got Me Singing. The song acts as a reference to Cohen's Hallelujah popular pop ballad, the first time in 1984 on the album Various Positions appeared and was covered over 100 times.

Finally, it must be noted that the album of Leonard Cohen-lovers is a must buy. Fans can not avoid it. The soon appear at the end even as a statement. It takes nine songs and 36 minutes to get to get to the point, what needs to be said. And if the background choir starts and thoughtful atmosphere briefly degenerates into a trifle or slipping into the country genre, you can use the break profitably, make coffee, think about what you hear and time to the chorus for concentrated listening his back.