Less would be more for Laughing Len
Today I have mostly been listening to Leonard Cohen’s new opus, Dear Heather. There are some staggeringly beautiful tracks on here, like “Because Of” and “There For You” but it suffers from overproduction, as if trying to compensate for Cohen’s glorious whiskey-and-cigarette tuneless growl. This is why we love him, amongst other things. Mr Cohen needs to do a Johnny Cash (RIP) and tell everyone to fuck off out of the studio and let him get on with on his own, a la American Recordings.
Although I imagine he’d find a suitably poetic way of telling everyone to fuck off.
As it is, there’s just way too much strident female lead vocal on this album which makes songs collapse into the aural equivalent of some wretched cruise liner combo - which is much the same problem that afflicted the previous album Ten New Songs. Theoretically I should just be grateful he’s still recording beyond 70 - but it physically pains me when great chunks of utterly inappropriate vocals or some godforsaken country twanging impinge on the sparseness of Len’s own words. It just makes me leap across the room screaming “No, no, no!” at the stereo.
I know, I should get out more.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Hallelujah Terrific news - Leonard Cohen is goi…
- Birds On The Wire I’ve just discovered two inte…
- Lucky Strike I idly entered some online competiti…
- Leonard Cohen Live At Last
- Dream Interviews: David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave
