Ten New Songs (Columbia) is Leonard Cohen’s first collection of new material in nine years; the man is not garrulous. And he seems to have slowed down to a crawl — the result of all that Zen meditation? This is one for very late at night, or you may become impatient.
Ever so slowly, and in a voice that seems more sepulchral than ever, he unveils his new songs against the slightly tacky synthesised backdrop he used on I’m Your Man. Musician and co-producer Sharon Robinson sings along, her voice shadowing his all the way through. Now and again one wishes he had left his whispers and groans unadorned. Robinson is also credited with co-writing the songs, though one suspects that applies to the tunes — the words are as quintessentially Cohen as any he has written.
Love (and/or sex) is at the heart of most of these songs, but suffused with Cohen’s numinous sense of experience. He is a great poet of longing, loss and the beauty of the moment, and songs such as Love Itself are as fine as any in his oeuvre. If Bob Dylan’s latest release is ramshackle, Cohen’s is precise; and if Dylan is a wild Romantic visionary, Cohen is a Metaphysical mystic.