Consumer Guide Album

Leonard Cohen: Dear Heather [Columbia, 2004]
I know it's hard to get a grip on, kids, but people keep getting older. They don't just reach some inconceivable benchmark--50 or, God, 60--and stop, Old in some absolute sense. The bones, the joints, the genitals, the juices, the delivery systems, and eventually the mind continue to break down, at an unpredictable pace in unpredictable ways. Leonard Cohen has had No Voice since he began recording at 33. But he has more No Voice today, at 70, than he did on Ten New Songs, at 67--the tenderness in his husky whisper of 2001, tenderness the way steak is tender, has dried up in his whispered husk of 2004, rendering his traditional dependence on the female backups who love him more grotesque. Nor does noblesse oblige underlie all the adaptations and settings--Lord Byron, Patti Page, a Quebecois folk song, various dead Canadian poets, himself. Rather they reflect the same diminished inspiration that makes you wonder whether his 9/11 song is enigmatic or merely inconclusive. Not only do I like the guy, I'm Old enough to identify with him. But I doubt I'll ever be Old enough to identify with this. On her deathbed, my 96-year-old mother-in-law was still relying on Willie Nelson's Stardust. That's more like it. B