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FIELD COMMANDER COHEN
Leonard Cohen
(SONY/COLUMBIA)
If you don't drink red wine, you will after listening to this album.
Leonard Cohen is cabernet music and this CD, which bottles together tracks recorded live during some 1979 U.K. and L.A. tour dates, is a heady blend of bohemia.
Though capturing Cohen on the tour for that year's Recent Songs album, only a quarter of the 12 songs here are taken from that disc.
The remainder are tracks that -- with the exception of Bird On The Wire, Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye and So Long, Marianne -- aren't extremely obvious choices.
That is, until you hear them.
Backed by the six-piece band Passenger, a violinist and mandolinist, and vocalists Sharon Robinson and Jennifer Warnes (the latter, of course, later went on to record an album of all Cohen interpretations, 1986's Famous Blue Raincoat), the Canadian bard is at his laidback best here.
Not singing, but wooing. Each performance is full-bodied and deliriously intoxicating.
From the doo-wop of the Death Of A Ladies' Man track Memories ("I walked up to the tallest and the blondest girl. I said, 'Look, you don't know me now but very soon you will; so won't you let me see, won't you let me see, won't you let me see your naked body?" -- only Cohen ...) to the subdued, sombre pseudo-flamenco of The Gypsy's Wife, Field Commander Cohen is a draining and drained dusk-until-dawn experience.
Brought up and dusted off from the Cohen cellar, 1979 was a very good year, indeed.
Track Listing
1. Field Commander Cohen
2.The Window
3.The Smokey Life
4.The Gypsy's Wife
5.Lover Lover Lover
6.Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
7.The Stranger Song
8.The Guests
9.Memories
10.Why Don't You Try
11.Bird On The Wire
12.So Long, Marianne