More Best Of - Cohen, Leonard (CD 1997)

Throughout his thirty-five year career, there has been no singer-songwriter who possessed a chilling yet, enduring influence as had Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen did. Cohen s music always contained a sense of sadness and poignancy that matched his deep and somber vocals that had became constant in his music. Cohen for years had always sang about dark subjects in his songs like Suzanne , Sisters Of Mercy , Bird On A Wire , Chelsea Hotel No. 2 and many more in his influential career that would inspire famous alternative rock bands like the Goth-rock band Sisters of Mercy, Concrete Blonde, and Jeff Buckley. In 1975 after releasing four acclaim albums, he released his first greatest hits compilation that became a huge hit and won scores of acclaim for its melancholy approach that his Best of album would be hailed as the Most Depressing Album of All-Time by a British music poll. In 1997, Cohen released a sequel that compiled his work from his 1985 album Various Positions to his 1992 release The Future with some live tracks and a couple of unreleased songs.

The More Best of Leonard Cohen is a thirteen-track album compiling Cohen s post-1975 career where he experimented with more contemporary instruments and sounds while keeping his melancholy sound in tact. Although his second compilation isn t complete since it doesn t feature material from his 1979 album Recent Songs and his 1977 album with legendary producer Phil Spector Death of a Ladies Man (one of Cohen s more maligned albums due to its notorious sessions where Spector actually held a gun in front of Cohen if he didn t get a song right and the album remains one of Cohen s least favorites which seems understandable why it didn t make it in this compilation). Despite those flaws, The More Best of is still an excellent compilation that contains several of Cohen s latter-day classics including Everybody Knows , Hallelujah , Take This Waltz , The Future , Anthem and many more including a live recording of the classic Suzanne . Always a dark singer-songwriter in the late 60s and early 70s, The More Best of still proves that Cohen could bring that same power and melancholy approach to his music to a new generation of fans in the 1980s and 1990s.

The first four songs off the compilation are from Cohen s 1988 release I m Your Man ; an album where Cohen updated his melancholy folk sound with stark keyboard melodies and ominous electronic rhythms. Though most artists who try to update their sounds usually fail, Cohen succeeds with his experiment and the album help attract a cult following among college rock fans. The first song in the compilation is the brooding Everybody Knows that is led mainly by its chilling keyboard hooks, slow drum rhythms with spurts of melodic bass and acoustic guitar hooks. The song s most chilling moment is when Cohen sings his deep and gruff vocals for his dark and poetic lyrics of Everybody knows that the dice are loaded/Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed/Everybody knows the war is over/Everybody knows the fight was fixed/The poor stay poor, the rich get rich/That s how it goes, everybody knows . Cohen wrote the song with collaborator Sharon Robinson to reflect the late 80s era of AIDS by giving the song its dark and chilling feel especially in its chorus of Everybody knows, everybody knows/That s how it goes, everybody knows where he sings it with singer Jennifer Warnes.

The title track to I m Your Man is a slow and eerie track led by smooth jazz-like drum rhythms and eerie synthesizers accompanying Cohen s brooding vocals as he sings cryptic lyrics of If you want a lover/I ll do anything you ask me to/If you want another kind of love/If you want a partner, take my hand or/If you want to strike me down in anger/Here I stand, I m your man . Cohen s lyrics is the real highlight of the song as he sings lyrics of sexual desire in a creepy yet, smooth approach which is why Cohen is a cool guy. With lines like If you want a father for your child/Or only want to walk with me a while across the sand/I m your man . Take This Waltz is a song that features a mid-tempo synthesizer and violin rhythm that has the tone of a waltz rhythm as Cohen sings the dark but beautiful song with its references to Vienna ballrooms and dark street setting as he sings the lovely chorus of Ay, ay ay ay/Take this waltz, take this waltz . Jennifer Warnes later joins him in the song as they change the chorus to O my love, O my love/Take this waltz, take this waltz . The next song is the bass-driven smoothness of Tower Of Song that features atmospheric percussions and bass rhythms as Cohen sings in his smooth and sly approach as he sings melancholy lyrics with references to Hank Williams and death with backing vocals of women singing De-do-dum-dum-dum after each verse that explores the subject of loss.

The next four songs on the album are from Cohen s 1992 effort The Future where he sang lyrics about the state of the world including the post-Communist eastern world, democracy, and other issues that would become popular enough to appear in the soundtrack to the Oliver Stone movie Natural Born Killers in 1994. First is the song Anthem co-produced by actress Rebecca De Mornay that is a slow and powerful song with Cohen s powerful lyrics of The birds they sang at the break of day/Start again I heard them say/Don t dwell on what has passed away/Or what is yet to be . The song features slow percussion rhythms and a powerful choir backing Cohen during the chorus of Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That s how the light gets in that proves Cohen s power as a lyricist and songwriter. Next is the political-inspired Democracy that is accompanied mainly by a cadence-like drumming rhythm to give the song a militaristic tone as Cohen sings lyrics with references to the Tiananmen Square massacre in China in 1989 and the bleak surroundings of corporate America as he sings his political-driven lyrics of It s coming through a hole in the air/From those nights in Tiananmen Square/It s coming from the feel/That it ain t exactly real or it s real, but it ain t exactly there/From the wars against disorder/From the sirens night and day/From the fires of the homeless/From the ashes of the gay/Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. as he is backed by soft keyboard tracks and harmonic-synthesizer tracks.

The next song from that album is the title track to The Future that features an up-tempo rhythm of drums and bass along with a strong organ accompaniment as Cohen sings the post-1980s world with references to the Berlin Wall, communism, Charles Manson, and its powerful chorus as he is backed by a choir in the lyrics of Things are going to slide in all directions/Won t be nothing, nothing you can measure any more/The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold/And it has overturned the order of the soul/When they said REPENT ( Repent, repent, repent as it s sung by the backing choir)/I wonder what they meant . Next is Closing Time that features country-like synthesizer tones and slow mechanical drum rhythms as Cohen sings his cryptic lyrics with singer Leanne Ungar accompanying him as they sing, So we re drinking and we re dancing and the band is really happening/and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high/And my very sweet companion, she s the Angel of Compassion/And she s rubbing half the world against her thigh/Every drinker, every dance lifts a happy face to thank her/And the fiddler fiddles something so sublime/All the women tear their blouses off and the men they dance on the polka-dots/And it s partner found and it s partner lost and it s hell to pay when the fiddler stops/It s closing time as country violins and country guitar slides come in to show Cohen s diversity in his music.

The next three songs on the compilation are live tracks from his Cohen Live album released in 1994. The live tracks features two songs from his 1985 album Various Positions and a classic from his 1968 debut release The Songs of Leonard Cohen titled Suzanne . First is a song from the Various Positions album titled Dance Me To The End Of Love that is a lovely melancholy-driven ballad with violin and accordion accompaniments as Cohen sings his dark lyrics of Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin/Dance me through the panic till I m gathered safely in/Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove/Dance me to the end of love . The slow and smooth tempo with its thumping rhythm shows Cohen s brilliance as a songwriter as his gruff vocals in coexists with its melancholy setting as it shows his mastery as an artist.

Next is the classic Suzanne from his 1968 debut album. Suzanne opens up with a melodic acoustic guitar opening as Cohen sings the opening lyrics of Suzanne takes you down/To the place near the river/You can hear the boats go by/You can spend the night beside her/And you know that she s half crazy/But that s why you want to be there/And she feeds tea and oranges/That come all the way from China/ And when you mean to tell her/That you have no love to give her as he sings in its slow and haunting tone as he sings the chorus of And you want to travel with her/You want to travel blind/And you know that she can trust you/For you ve touched her perfect body/With your mind . The other song from the Various Positions album is the brilliant Hallelujah that features a similar tempo and tone like Suzanne but with slow electric guitars and drums as he sings his death-ridden lyrics of Baby, I ve been here before/I know this room, I ve walked this floor/I used to live alone before I knew you/I ve seen your flag on the marble arch/But love is not a victory march/It s a cold and it s a broken, Hallelujah . During the chorus of Hallelujah, hallelujah , he is joined by his backup singers in a gospel-like tone as he continues to sing his cryptic lyrics with its dark and haunting musical tone.

The final two songs on the album are a couple of unreleased tracks Cohen made between the years of 1985 and 1992. First is sly, cool rocker of Never Any Good that features a smooth mid-tempo rhythm to match Cohen s sly and gruff vocals as he sings, I was never any good at loving you/I was never any good and coming through for you/You re going to feel much better/When you cut me loose forever/I was never any good/Never any good/I was never any good at loving you as he is accompanied by a classic R&B sound with horns and throbbing bass hooks in the song. The final song on the compilation is the robotic The Great Event as an eerie keyboard track accompanies the vocals of a female vocalist speaking in a robotic rhythm saying Cohen s lyrics of It s going to happen very soon/The great event which will end the horror/Which will end the sorrow that lasts for over a minute Cohen brings lyrics of bleak post-apocalyptic surroundings into the song to match its robotic tone.

Despite not featuring material from his Recent Songs album in 1979, The More Best of is still an excellent introduction Leonard Cohen s music. Many of his music today appeared in films or have been covered by several artists including Jeff Buckley and Concrete Blonde. Cohen since that compilation took a low profile until 2001 when he released the critically-acclaim album Ten New Songs that proved to the music world that he still got some juice left in him. For those who own the first compilation should get this compilation. New fans will find this an excellent introduction since his music had become popular in the college and alt-rock circuits. In the end, Leonard Cohen is still the man when it comes to dark and somber songs.