Thanks For The Dance/ Leonard Cohen - singer-songwriter

By Narendra Kusnur

Album: Thanks For The Dance
Artiste: Leonard Cohen
Genre: Singer-songwriter
Label: Columbia/ Legacy
Rating: ****

Canadian singer Leonard Cohen’s 14th album You Want It Darker was released just 19 days before his death in November 2016. A collection that talked of death, ailment and spirituality, it received a great response among fans.

One would have presumed that would be the legend’s swan song, but his son Adam Cohen had now put out the album Thanks For The Dance, containing pieces the maestro recorded but never completed. And mind you, this isn’t a series of leftovers from previous records, but songs he had planned to eventually release.

In many ways, this project is reminiscent of An American Prayer, where other members of the Doors used poetry recorded by Jim Morrison. Even the tracks here have subdued instrumentation, concentrating on simple acoustic guitar lines, as Cohen renders his writing in a semi-spoken, poetry recitation format.

The album is filled with words that are quintessential Cohen. On ‘Happens To The Heart’, he sings, “I was always working steady, but I never called it art; I got my shit together, meeting Christ and reading Marx,” His voice booms, filling the air with resonance.

‘Moving On’ and ‘The Night Of Santiago’ provide a nostalgic look at past relationships – on the latter, Cohen sings, “For the sake of conversation, I took her at her word.” The title track has the gem, “Stop at the surface, the surface is fine, we don’t need to go any deeper.”

Lyrically, there's beauty in ‘It's Torn’ – “There's silt on your ankles, there’s salt on your feet: the river's too shallow, the ocean too deep.” On ‘Puppet’, he recalls the horrors of war, by singing “Puppet presidents command, puppet troops to burn the land, puppet fire, puppet flames, feed on all the puppet names.” Truly, this one’s a masterpiece.

To be sure, the album may require some close and repeated listening to sink in. The emphasis is clearly on deep poetry, rather than melodic presentation that would give you a quick fix. But yet again, it proves why Cohen is one of the most respected songwriters of our time.