It is befitting for one of the world’s greatest songwriters and singers that the final album of his lifetime – revelling in themes of faith, purpose, personal demons and the healing, overwhelming power of love – was released on 21 October 2016, 17 days before his death aged 82.
His grizzled, smoky baritone doesn’t waver or flinch. His beautifully haunting lyrics are delivered with the solemnity of hymns. There’s a sacred, graceful sanctity to be found in his assuredness. He does not howl to the skies, or rage, rage against the dying of the light. He lights a lazy cigarette, taps his cap to the Lord who awaits him, and casually traipses toward that final horizon.
On his fourteenth studio album, the legendary Canadian left fans (and future fans) with a tangible paean for existence. The metallic, honeyed thrum of steely guitar sends echoey throbs and sprinkles of silvery sound through Cohen’s bluesy country Leaving The Table. It is one of several songs in which he throws his cards down and leaves the game. It is a song in which he surrenders, his appetite for urgently chasing fulfilment satiated.
“I don’t need a lover, that wretched beast is tamed,” he intones. No longer identifying as the too-cool lover, the arty pop star ingénue, he has refined his being to that of a man unencumbered by duties to others. It is a stream of thought he weaves through On The Level too.
“Now I’m living in this temple where they tell you what to do/ I’m old and I’ve had to settle on a different point of view. I was fighting with temptation, but I didn’t want to win.”
The clarity of lushly layered strings, soulful backing vocals, harmonising duets and the unobtrusive time-keeping drums might suggest a fancy large-scale studio production, but the reality was a far cry from that and all the better for it.
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