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Leonard Cohen, Feb. 19, Beacon Theater, NYC
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Leonard Cohen, Feb. 19, Beacon Theater, NYC
I’ve seen the future, brother. And it is murder.
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When I excitedly dropped the notion of a Leonard Cohen show at the Academy of Music in Icepack over a month ago, I didn’t do it to merely blab the rumor I’d heard. I mentioned the now-confirmed May 12 show (tickets go on sale March 2) as a way of sounding trumpets.
As a wordsmith, poet, novelist and the raspiest of mummy-lizard singers (getting raspier, lizardy and mummier and gloriously so with age) there is Cohen. Then nothing. Everything and everyone else you can take and stuff it up the hole in your culture.
From the crowd of elders (like Harvey Keitel and Richard Belzer) and kids (Adrien Grenier, Rufus Wanwright) at the Beacon’s front door, Cohen’s first show in the U.S. in 15+ years meant more than just a comeback.
It was a zealously religious experience, truly zealously religious experience. Better than Zeppelin’s reunion. Better than seeing Dave Grohl behind McCartney at the Grammys.
Besides, Cohen actually hadn’t gone away. Since 2000’s he released two new studio albums (Ten New Songs in 2001 and Dear Heather in 2004) a live album or two with a new live DVD coming out next month. A film and soundtrack called Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man of 2006 proved how his dark romanticism, skewered political outlook and gloomily apocalyptic envisioning inspired Nick Cave, Antony and U2. And a new book of poetry and drawings Book of Longing came, saw and sold.
You wouldn’t know that from how the crowd reacted to Cohen. Every time he kneeled before a player or tipped his chapeau in appreciation of a solo, the crowd ahhhhed. “It’s been a long time since I stood onstage in New York. I was 60 years old then – just a kid with a crazy dream,” said Cohen creamily in a baritone voice one note above the rasp that had been his sing-speak just previous to this announcement.
During his 15 years away from American stages he took to Buddhism and teased about having taken to Prozac, Xanax , even “Tylenol, full strength” and though he “turned to a study of religion and philosophy, cheerfulness kept breaking through.”
A thin man hale and spry at 74, Cohen bounced slightly on his heels, swayed and boxed in to mid air while taking “The Future” in his hands. In command of a craggy knuckled dragging baritone barely more than two notes, it’s the quickest of emphatic words and phrases that caught the audience off guard. “The blizzard of the world/has crossed the threshold/and it has overturned the order of the soul/When they said repent repent/I wonder what they meant.”
As he dragged those words through mid-air — through the pop-jazz-folk prickle of Spanish guitars, smooth saxophones, nearly layered keyboards and sunny background vocalists — Cohen didn’t holler or punch his “repent”s. Their merest emphasis was implied. It was the phrase “overturned the order of the soul” that had come with stress. As if something could be done. But alas, no. “I’ve seen the future, brother. And it is murder.”
Sex, death, spiritualism, Joplin, depression, the solitary isolation of night — each of these caught their breath on Cohen’s greatest songs “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” “Sisters of Mercy,” “Suzanne,” “Famous Blue Raincoat and the stammering “I'm Your Man.”
The way he murkily intoned “baby” in a mono-voice so low and gravely during the gospel groove of “Ain't No Cure for Love” was awe inspiring. The funereal cloud of “Bird on a Wire” the gypsy country groan of “Everybody Knows” and the acoustic guitar noir of “Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye” were poignant and rapturous without growing overblown. Even as the music stays smoothly billowy Cohen’s dry icy croon brought you down to earth.
He spoke the words to “Anthem” before singing them — which was an epic touch. A haunted “The Gypsy’s Wife,” a windy “So, Long Marianne” — they all became part of a two-and-a-half hour plus marathon. Still, the Biblical relief of “Halleluiah” was a major highlight (a tough call what with “The Future” and a rousing “First We Take Manhattan” and a redemptive “Sisters of Mercy”). Not only did it loom as a black-light poem to gods and lovers whispering into the darkness. It outshined all those who dared brave that song ably since Cohen penned it. But neither Buckley nor Cale nor Wainwright (who sang the song at the Kimmel the week previous) could find the holy grace that Cohen did the other night.
Not a one.
Hopefully Pat Rapa and the music section will give me another space to talk about what is to come.
See you May 12 you beautiful losers.
See Also: Kathryn Yu's photos on Flickr.
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