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Leonard Cohen performs at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Dec. 2, 2010.

Goodbye darkness, his old friend.

Leonard Cohen has never been one to talk about his songs, explaining that the works are complete and to comment on them would be redundant. And, yeah, sure enough, after hearing Going Home, the soulful opening hat-tip of his new album Old Ideas, what's left for him to say? The piece is an appraisal of Cohen, by Cohen, set to sparse organ accompaniment and barely sung in a quarter-speed rap. There's a suggestion of Hallelujah's swell, and I think I sense a slight smile.

Going Home begins and ends with the same third-person verse: "I love to speak with Leonard, he's a sportsman and a shepherd; He's a lazy bastard, living in a suit." This lazy bastard's 12th album is his first studio outing since 2004's Dear Heather. It's a thoughtful record, of course it is, about bleakness and threads of light, about love and hate and healing, and about slavery and freedom – always, with Cohen, the freedom.

The gruff baritone inside Cohen's head in Going Home is spiritual, loving and blunt. What's being said has to do with the poet-man's missions and whether or not his choices were ever choices at all: "He wants to write a love song, an anthem of forgiving, a manual for living with defeat / A cry above the suffering, a sacrifice recovering, but that isn't what I need him to complete."

Old Ideas, from the 77-year-old Montreal mope, is a charismatic record – moving, slyly upbeat and even sexy. Cohen is all the lover dude for Anyhow, a simmering vamp that had my dress off by the first chorus. Leonard, my man, you're killing me with "I know you have to hate me, but could you hate me less?"

Amen is a softy-brushed shuffle concerning victims and vengeance belonging to the lord. The violin and cornet parts are suave.

The Darkness is a blues, straight up. Dig that swirling organ.

With its soft country lope, Lullaby is for long nights – for sleeping or, you know, whatever. That's Sharon Robinson on angelic backing vocals. She's all over the album, her tone one of tea and sympathy.

I like Crazy to Love You, a Dylanish ballad co-written with Anjani Thomas, a collaborator and more who teamed with the bard on her Blue Alert from 2006. There's a freedom in lunacy, Cohen is saying: "Sometimes I'd head for the highway, I'm old and the mirrors don't lie / But crazy has places to hide in, deeper than saying goodbye."

Saying goodbye, is that what Cohen is doing here? Do hear Going Home and Show Me the Place. The latter is a hymn for the ages, absolutely, in which a soul is low and lost. "Show me the place, where you want your slave to go / Show me the place, I've forgotten, I don't know." And on Going Home, Cohen is leaving without a burden – "going home to where it's better than before."

Free at last then, Leonard Cohen, birds on a wire have nothing on you.

Old Ideas

  • Leonard Cohen
  • Sony


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