‘I’m angry and I’m tired all the time…’
Leonard Cohen is one of those artists I’ve been circling for years without ever fully taking the plunge. He’s essentially Bob Dylan mixed with Tom Waits. Two musical artists that I love. While I’m familiar with most of his big songs, I’ve never dived into a full album before. What better place to start than with his final album released just months before his death. Still, given that this is Leonard Cohen, I’m sure the whole thing is very upbeat and positive…
Released in October of 2016, You Want I Darker was critically acclaimed upon release and has only grown in stature since the great man’s death just under a month later. The title track kicks things off with the gospel singers in the background making it sound as if Cohen himself is approaching the pearly gates as he sings. In keeping with the heavy subject matter, his register dips below Waits and Oscar the Grouch to land somewhere between a hell hound and Louis Armstrong falling down a mine shaft. When he intones, ‘I’m ready, Lord’, he imbues it with so much feeling that it’s almost unbearable. ‘Treaty’, perhaps the most well-known track on the album and the only one I’d previously heard, manages to be sad, mournful and uplifting all at the same time – ‘I’m angry and I’m tired all the time’, Cohen sighs. I feel that.
‘Leaving the Table’ is a classic Cohen ballad veering between acerbic spitefulness and begrudging acceptance. When he growls, ‘I’m out of the game’ at the song’s conclusion, it’s impossible not to hear the depth of emotion he puts into it. ‘If I Didn’t Have Your Love’ is probably the only straightforward love song on the album and it features more of Cohen actually singing rather than talking than the rest of the album combined. If nothing else, it demonstrates that his voice remained powerful until the end. ‘Travelling Light’ is perhaps my favourite song on the record. Maudlin violin snakes around some frantic Spanish guitar as the Canadian folk hero reckons with his own mortality whilst still maintaining that trademark glint in his eye that prevents him from becoming an out-and-out miserablist. ‘Steer Your Way’ ends the record. It’s an apocalyptic warning to those left behind, with lush ‘Eleanor Rigby’ strings running through it and a perfect showstopper.
Through it all, Cohen flat out refuses to indulge in sentimentality. There are sincere moments here, of course, but they’re combined with other moments of detachment or impish humour and it is this odd combination of the last yelpings of a dying court jester and a very ill and very real Canadian musician that defines You Like it Darker. Death here is glimpsed from behind the curtain, rarely faced head-on, but it’s always there, like a raven perched on Cohen’s shoulder. It’s challenging but not in the way you might think. It’s contemplative but not in the way you might think. Put simply, Cohen remains an enigma to the end.