Laughing Len strikes again: ILM Artist Poll #81 - Leonard Cohen

So is it OK to post our ballots now? That's normally a thing on ILM polls, right?

seems ok to me! here's mine (non-placers in bold)

The Partisan
Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye
Paper Thin Hotel
First We Take Manhattan
Hallelujah
Suzanne
Who by Fire
Famous Blue Raincoat
The Master
Waiting for the Miracle
Ballad of the Absent Mare
On the Level
The Law
Lover, Lover, Lover
So Long, Marianne
Fingerprints
You Want It Darker
Story of Isaac
I Can’t Forget
Lady Midnight

Here's mine then, bold didn't place. Interestingly (or maybe not), all four of my non-placers are from Recent Songs.

1. Famous Blue Raincoat
2. Joan of Arc
3. Suzanne
4. Take This Longing
5. The Window
6. So Long Marianne
7. Bird on the Wire
8. The Guests
9. Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye
10. Chelsea Hotel #2
11. The Traitor
12. Alexandra Leaving
13. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
14. Sisters of Mercy
15. Take This Waltz
16. Stranger Song
17. Avalanche
18. Ballad of the Absent Mare
19. Anthem
20. If It Be Your Will

a very enjoyable poll, great blurbs

your mini-essay on Paper Thin Hotel made me listen to that song anew and the Dulli rendition is too beautiful

did not vote, had I voted there is a chance that "Darkness" had been my #1 (surely top 3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bxbw0wfDOI

no grand statement on life, but a HELLA cool blues

weirdly I am not a huge fan of the Dulli PTH, I had to include it tho obviously

playlist finally updated with the entire top 40:
https://open.spotify.com/user/suckerblues/playlist/58W5K0QfbwWu3nbvaf009k

listening to "Field Commander Cohen" rn. weird that he mentions Fidel Castro in this song. he's the only named person in the song other than Cohen. they both died Nov 2016.

man, the title track of Death of a Ladies' Man got robbed in this one

It's a strange song, with a kind of off-putting, aloof quality... The lyric is wonderful (though I don't know whether it would stand on its own as poetry), & kinda reminds me of some early mock-ballads of T.S. Eliot (the line about the "working-class mustache" in particular... I couldn't say why)

But the production job -- striking though it is -- seems to lack some necessary dynamic or textural variation, with the result that listening to it just wears me out.

Karl otm

love that drums-less ending that just stretches on, twinkling in the heavens.

haha yeah the coda just goes ooooonnnnnnnnn

Spector's penchant for leaving in drumming mistakes is sort of endearing, shows up most prominently on this song and Dion's "Born to Be With You"

i think about Dion and Cohen's albums all the time. 70s Phil Spector is an odd beast, lots of string synths, leaving in mistakes, etc. DOALM is pretty much an unfinished record, using rough vocals cos the tapes were basically taken at ransom (???) and Cohen never got to finish the record on his terms. from what i have read, Cohen never really hated this album or cursed Spector for doing that. it was a totally unique experience for him, which is a big part of why he wanted them to work together in the first place.

so we have live bands and endless rehearsal replaced by...ethereal multi-track symphonies? it used to be teenage symphonies, now it's middle aged symphonies, fat and bloated, drunk, still lusting after young women and pining over lost loves, trying to deconstruct your persona or fall in love yet again after failing at both so many times. a pop Dark Night of the Soul. fwiw i feel like The Beach Boys "Love You" fits neatly into this category. another attempt at synthesized studio pastiches of 60s doo wop.

love in space. it is not simply a wall of sound anymore, it is a swirling, churning galaxy. in the 70s Spector sort of got into space rock. the lilting keyboards on the intro to "Paper Thin Hotel" is very Spacemen 3. (also see Dion's phaser-drenched cover of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands".)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN6H3B42j1k

Jason Pierce loves BTBWY iirc. You can def hear 70s Spector in the S3/Spiritualized stuff.

George Harrison's "Let It Down" also belongs on a Phil Spector-Spiritualized mixtape

Excellent posts.

nah the whole DOalM album is horrible, by some way LC's worst album

challops

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/24/drank-a-lot