Leonard Cohen albums poll

none of his albums lacks a clunker or two, but my favorite would be a combination of New Skins, I'm Your Man, and The Future.

i'm curious about the quality of his recent live albums, i heard songs from the road is pretty great

or maybe live in london?

Voting 'Death of a Ladies Man' just cos it's so batshit, drunken, and psychedelic. I love the production, it's like swimming in a bottle of wine.

I would say Songs of Leonard Cohen is pretty much entirely without clunkers.

i only have songs of love and hate and i'm your man, i love both but would go w/the former.

I'm Your Man would basically be flawless without Jazz Police. But in spite of not liking the song, I kind of admire how spectacularly awful it is.

the future, which is a glossy record about dirt and terror (this describes most of his career post-ladies man but i feel this record is the apotheosis), with two cover songs that sort of perversely lighten the mood, and an instrumental that i only recently figured out is completely beautiful.

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/jazz.html

I clearly haven't given enough thought to Jazz Police.

Various Positions is crazy good but Love and Hate and From a Room and Songs of have more "this song is forever" numbers

this is basically impossible, i guess songs of love and hate is his BEST but i'm really partian to NEW SKIN and RECENT SONGS (which is underrated it seems)

first album by a nose from the second one.

haha -- no consensus!

The last live record is extraordinary.

totally feel the 'affection for new skin vote' but yeah songs for love & hate. what a comfort, what a mood, goes so far with so little. i always had it on cd, which doesn't have the awesome inscription on the LP:

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2440/4052657281_83a595d3cb_z.jpg

so much of the lp simmers or flames under the same kind of weird godly sanctity

The last two live records (chronologically) are outstanding. Made me wonder why people were so blown away by the Isle of Wight show - he's so much better now!

I'm tempting to rep for Recent Songs here--same band as on the "Field Commander Cohen" live album, with an oud and all.

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

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

I was also tempted by Recent Songs but had to go with Death of a Ladies Man.

"I Left a Woman Waiting" is way gorgeous.

this about clunkers is crazy,most of his albums lack clunkers!
i'll probably vote ten new songs or future("democracy" and "anthem" are killing me recently)

none of his albums lacks a clunker or two

Songs of Leonard Cohen
Songs From a Room
Songs of Love and Hate
New Skin For the Old Ceremony

...all lack a clunker. But the answer is Songs of Love and Hate, which combines amazing songs with the most imaginative structure of his albums.

"Diamonds in the Mine" started as a clunker to me, but I grew into it.

I'm glad to have looked up the potential Recent Songs clunker on YouTube, because both of these improve it:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V-Rth-NKk4

I'm not a fan of the earliest work.

I know Cohen best from the Essential set that's gotten some talk on another Cohen thread recently, & so don't know the albums well-enough. Of the songs I know well from the earliest work, I tend to prefer covers, e.g. Fairport's "Bird On A Wire" & "Susanne", but I don't know the albums well-enough to say whether I think this generally.

A trawl through the Cohen corpus has been on my short list of musical trips in the next quarter or so.

i don't know that i'd say any albums save for dear heather have "clunkers" on them. there are some duller songs on songs from a room, various positions, maybe the future.

dull = clunker

I don't believe in the inviolability of Cohen albums (or anyone's).

maybe sometimes an album's imperfections only serve to make it shine brighter

http://crafthead.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/anteater_hopper.jpg

Exactly! I listen to DOALM more than any of its predecessors, and it's often horrible.

Gotta have garbage and flowers, Mozart and bubblegum.

or crack and anal sex

ok, I've lived with these albums for years now. let's see (studio albums only, I can never get behind live albums in a 'best of' poll):

s/t – unfuckwithable. the imagery is rapturous and the guitar just keeps thrumming along in that darkly menacing way. I think it's the occasional shaft of light from the other instruments and the more generous/loving/hopeful aspect of some of the lyrics that gives this one the edge over the next two.

songs from a room – jeez, this one is bleak. he said in an interview somewhere that he was suffering from depression at the time and it sounds it. nevertheless this is the first LC album i ever heard so it will always remain special to me.

songs of love and hate – also genius but i think the first one just edges it because the songs on this one aren't so concise, they tend to meander somewhat.

new skin – def a couple of clunkers here ("is this what you wanted", "leaving greensleeves") along w/the obvious classics. "take this longing" is the real sleeper though, in my top ten LC songs of all time. never seems to get a lot of attention, that one.

death of a ladies' man – yeah, horrible.

recent songs – v interesting, stylistically diverse album. out of print for a long time, i had to hunt high and low for this one in the 80s when i was picking up his records.

various positions – love the twangy sounds on this one. country music seems like a pretty good fit for cohen, if only because his spare and rigorous lyrics create such a delicious tension w/the more obviously maudlin elements of the music.

i'm your man – got to say i never really cared for this one, "take this waltz" excepted. in another interview at the time he talked about finding a "dead, flat language" to get out of the stylistic corner he felt he'd written himself into. that's my problem w/the lyrics here, and the synths just don't move me. and cohen should be nothing if not moving.

the future – half a great album. "be for real", "always" and "tacoma trailer" seem like filler to me. i suspect he had problems putting an album together for release. "democracy" originally had 80 verses or something.

ten new songs – a bit polite for my liking. "alexandra leaving" is also top 10.

dear heather – only ever played it once, which says something.

old ideas – haven't heard it yet.

I love Ten New Songs as really perfect background music, it reminds me of ronan's deep dark slinky night music youtube thread, a bit. And yeah the songs are perfect for his live shows. I saw him a few years back play at a winery in the country at night and the whole thing was O_O

But I'd have to think about which LC album is actually my favourite.

Live In London would be my desert island LC album, and I also adore Cohen Live: Leonard Cohen In Concert. I like Leonard best when he's live.

I gained newfound appreciation for "A Thousand Kisses Deep" after The Good Thief used it so shrewdly.

Ignoring Jazz Police, I'll go for I'm Your Man, one of those albums where everything sounds like a standout. At least three of these are in my all-time Cohen top 10. Songs of Leonard Cohen and Songs of Love and Hate are the other two masterpieces. The Future has the most frustrating classic/dud collision.

First album's genius only fully hit me when I saw McCabe and Mrs Miller, where these incredibly specific, detailed songs he'd written years earlier somehow seemed to have been tailor-made for those characters.

anagram mostly right - except for New Skin. I had a flatmate who would only allow that album of Cohen's to get played, so I kind of got used to it. And 'is this what you wanted' is great! I mean:

You were Marlon Brando,
I was Steve McQueen.
You were K.Y. Jelly,
I was Vaseline.
You were the father of modern medicine,
I was Mr. Clean.
You where the whore and the beast of Babylon,
I was Rin Tin Tin.

And I've always loved 'leaving green sleeves':

I sang my songs, I told my lies,
to lie between your matchless thighs.
And ain't it fine, ain't it wild
to finally end our exercise

Then I saw you naked in the early dawn,
oh, I hoped you would be someone new.
I reached for you but you were gone, so lady I'm going too.

i don't think death of a ladies man is the bees knees, and i hope it never gets unduly elevated in the cohen canon b/c of some challopsy fans, but no way is it horrible or terrible full stop. at the very least, it is an interesting experiment.

i like death of a ladies man just for its singularity in Cohen's catalog. such a crazy left turn, in terms of how he made records. don't know whether the songs are up to his usual standard, but it's entertaining! i've played it for people who don't like the earlier stuff and gotten a good response.

songs of love and hate is maybe my favorite album of all time so i guess that

NSFW (naked lady)

http://1heckofaguy.com/2011/02/02/more-about-leonard-cohens-hollywood-ymca-t-shirt/

this poll is gonna be all over the place

yeah i have no idea what to vote for tbh

I'm leaning toward Live In London because 1) it's great and 2) it covers all these other great albums

I'm still really tempted to vote Recent Songs, but the songwriting on Various Positions is really my favorite. Basically I think he's writing at a Yeats level there (really).

"If It Be Your Will" is my favorite Cohen song.

who can guess which one I'm voting for

Yeah, it's just an amazing poem and an amazing song.

Deets on its form:

Spenserian stanza: verse form that consists of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by a ninth line of six iambic feet (an alexandrine); the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. The first eight lines produce an effect of formal unity, while the hexameter completes the thought of the stanza. Invented by Edmund Spenser for his poem The Faerie Queene (1590–1609), the Spenserian stanza has origins in the Old French ballade (eight-line stanzas, rhyming ababbcbc), the Italian ottava rima (eight iambic pentameter lines with a rhyme scheme of abababcc), and the stanza form used by Chaucer in his “Monk’s Tale” (eight lines rhyming ababbcbc). A revolutionary innovation in its day, the Spenserian stanza fell into general disuse during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was revived in the 19th century by the Romantic poets—e.g., Byron in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Keats in “The Eve of St. Agnes,” and Shelley in “Adonais.”

well it pains me to say it but I do have to agree with Geir.

btw Geir you need to get over to the Ask Geir thread, there are some outstanding questions there.

i love death of a ladies man, but didn't vote for it. as shakey's vote shows, it's the album for people who aren't big fans of cohen's other work -- either the delicate arrangements of the early stuff or the slimy synth pop of the 80s stuff.

I voted for it. It's my favorite. All his other records, while amazing, make me too sad. That one is sort of sad but in a happy, silly, drunken way.

Perhaps we should be asking why the record with "Jazz Police" got 2nd place!

btw Geir you need to get over to the Ask Geir thread, there are some outstanding questions there.

better yet, go there and stay there.

geir has only made one post in this thread which I happen to agree with, should I get out of here as well then

Recent Songs should've done better and I'm Your Man should be wayyy lower.

the right album won imo

as shakey's vote shows, it's the album for people who aren't big fans of cohen's other work

yeah I am not being a contrarian, it is genuinely the work of his I enjoy the most. I find the baritone+acoustic guitar sparseness and general humorlessness of his early records genuinely irritating in their "I AM SERIOUS ARTISTE" presentation. he has tons of wonderful turns of phrase and some striking melodies but, for example, watching early clips from his career of performing these songs he looks like a really sad statue. totally blank/motionless. I find myself waiting for a pigeon to land on him and poop on his shoulder.

The only post-70s stuff I've heard of his are the original version of "Everybody Knows" (don't care for it) and the cassette that my mom bought of "The Future" which I found unbearable.

In general I think he's a good songwriter who is usually not the best presenter/vehicle for his songs. Spector collab really bears that out imho.

The very end of the title track on DOALM is so great, the way it just gets slower and slower and dreamier, the whole thing just evaporating into a fizzing cosmos.

I can't separate his droll, gravelly timbre from the arrangements, especially in the post-'88 songs. His voice started to SOUND like a cheap $15 Casio synth -- a huge plus.

general humorlessness of his early records

gtfo they're full of jokes they just haven't been telegraphed by the production for you

Steven Wright stole his schtick amirite

general humorlessness of his early records

does not compute

He's definitely funny sometimes, but are they really FULL of jokes?

by songs of love and hate i'd say yes. not so much JOKES but lots of wry humor.

Doesn't this man ever rest? A new round of European tour dates for the autumn announced today.

well he's broke so no

is he still broke? might've thought that last world tour would've replenished the coffers. he was selling out huge places.

yeah he doesn't need to tour any more, the last round of activity has seen to that. he's obviously doing it for love.

its crazy to imagine my 80-year-old father in law undertaking something like touring, but I guess Cohen must be in pretty good shape.

think you guys may be overestimating how much touring brings in

think you may not be entirely clear what "broke" means

did i vote in this, songs from a room got robbed ROBBED

EARLY (LEONARD) COHEN v LATE COHEN

Four votes for Songs from a Room is wtf.

Too much? Or not enough?

Not enough.

His most successful album in the UK, perhaps (got to no 2, as did Old Ideas). Perhaps it's lack of success elsewhere (outside of Canada) is a reason it polled low?

even more befuddling is this

Death of a Ladies' Man 8

Yeah, not enough

I'm drunkenly moping in a Songs of Love and Hate shirt, so I agree with the top answer. The rest not so much.

i agree with these results but i think ten new songs should have at least ten votes

interesting, say more about that

10ns is a masterpiece

I probably wouldn't have voted for it but 0 is painful

I like five of the Ten New Songs but it's one of those times I thought getting someone else to write the music -- even if that person is Sharon Robinson -- produced a lethargic record.

I think I said upthread (and many years ago) something to the effect that 10 New Songs is his best mood music album, and the lethargic quality actually feeds into that a lot. I think that dynamic of barbed, whispered lullabyes over soft somnambulant keyboards on the one hand seems like a kind of hack's idea of late era cohen, but on the other, well, sometimes I like to be fed lines by hacks.

Obviously the last few albums have also leaned hard into that post-I'm Your Man noirish sound, but none with the same air of massaged consistency that I'm sure many find boring. But it's probably the Cohen album I reach for most often (translation: I am old and sad and need comforting).

i love the ten new songs vibe. a thousand kisses deep was used to great effect in 'the good thief', which is the first time i heard cohen from that particular style, having really only known his acoustic work and a few choice '80s cuts.

tim otm, there's an aesthetic continuity to it that's kinda like being folded up in velvet; it's what i want from the future but that record distracts from it with its covers. i also think "in my secret life" and "alexandra leaving" are unmatched in his catalog, as songs and as poems; they're in many ways his most crisp compositions, a style he arrived at imo by way of "anthem" and "tower of song," and which he continued to build on in the last run of records

a bit from me this am:

Ten new songs, recorded virtually alone in his house, whispering so as not to disturb the neighbours, the sprechgesang never more intimate, and how one song comes back to haunt another, both written in common meter (amazing grace how sweet the sound) so you know it's really One Old Song.

which I guess was my way of saying tim otm, though I couldnt have known it at the time

Every song y'all praised on TNS wold be a keeper, and "In My Secret Life" and "A Thousand Kisses Deep" are all time. Also:

a thousand kisses deep was used to great effect in 'the good thief',

otm. I can't think of the song w/out remembering the movie (which deserves more love btw).

A great line I had forgotten from "That Don't Make It Junk" (on 10 New Songs):

"I fought against the bottle... but i had to do it drunk."

Such a beautiful song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU5FPAR7ass

indeed

What's wrong with Jazz Police? It's eccentric and likeable.

it's a bit noisy

"Jazz Police" and "Boogie Street" are two rare duds for me.