Ladies Men
Aug. 31st, 2006 11:36 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
anthonyeaston.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
poptimistsso i bought death of a ladies man this week, and the fight b/w cohen and spector for supermacy, or for the words and the music to work against each other in such a tense way, makes it an incredible listen, i was wrong about the album.
but listening to let it be again, where something similar should happen, it doenst, its just an ugly, sentimental record.
my thesis was, interesting things happen when
a) spector is allowed to win
b) spector fails to win, but struggles to try.
though the second half of this thesis is disprovable with let it be, and i found for a decade, death of a ladies man an impossible listen...
i dont know what this means, but it keeps reminding me of poptimist, because we keep paying attention to who is behind the curtain (ie the new paris is kind of amazing b/c scott sorch (sp) is amazing), and these two examples seem like an interesting test case of what happens when people with strong, interior voices work together.
why does death of a ladies man work and let it be fail?
why is cohen pleased w. death and displeased with let it be?
(this is the only time that cohen is lush, he went from guitars to casio, and well the beatles were always lush, but differently lush than spector)
(the aesthetics of "lushness". maybe?)
but listening to let it be again, where something similar should happen, it doenst, its just an ugly, sentimental record.
my thesis was, interesting things happen when
a) spector is allowed to win
b) spector fails to win, but struggles to try.
though the second half of this thesis is disprovable with let it be, and i found for a decade, death of a ladies man an impossible listen...
i dont know what this means, but it keeps reminding me of poptimist, because we keep paying attention to who is behind the curtain (ie the new paris is kind of amazing b/c scott sorch (sp) is amazing), and these two examples seem like an interesting test case of what happens when people with strong, interior voices work together.
why does death of a ladies man work and let it be fail?
why is cohen pleased w. death and displeased with let it be?
(this is the only time that cohen is lush, he went from guitars to casio, and well the beatles were always lush, but differently lush than spector)
(the aesthetics of "lushness". maybe?)
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Date: 2006-09-01 11:26 am (UTC)I think Let It Be's failure isn't because of Spector's involvement (maybe compare Let It Be with the re-released un-Spectored version? here there can be PROOF). If DoaLM is Phil v Leoanrd - FITE!, then Let It Be is even more a John v Paul battle. That's where the tension's coming from. The Spectorizing of it's just another part of that.
DoaLM is interesting, but I do consider it Cohen's lowest hour. And I don't think he was ever that pleased with it - certainly most of what I've read suggests not.
WHY I dislike it so (when I am noted Cohen-obsessive) is possibly harder to work out. (Especially when I haven't listened to it properly for some time.) The actual songs are overwhelmed by the chaos that both Cohen and Spector tend towards, I think. Looking at earlier Cohen tracks, there's always been a temptation to break down into mindless warble, but it's been mostly controlled up until DoaLM. (I'm thinking of the end of One of Us Cannot Be Wrong, or Sing Another Song, Boys, or Diamonds in the Mine, or Leaving Green Sleeves.) And in those songs, the chaos is tensioned against the perfect words, or soft backing vocals, or precise, soft guitar. And it works (mostly). But with DoaLM, the chaos and the white noise take over and it's all unbalanced.