Why I hate Death of a Ladies Man

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

In response to anthonyeaston's loving it. (I wrote this maybe ten days ago, but haven't gotten around to posting it until now.)




I love every other Cohen album. I listen to him possibly more frequently than is thought sensible. But this album I bought and listened to maybe twice before putting it away on a shelf. I take it out, and dust it off (metaphorically, at least), and listen to it about one a year. I've listened to it maybe ten times, ever. I listen to all his other albums a *lot* more than that. Ten times in a week, sometimes. (This might be admitting myself to be far too much of a Cohen-obsessive.)

Anyway, this weekend I've listened to it several times. It's playing now. (Sean is upsairs taking a bath, which is lucky.)

I still don't like it. I'm a lot closer to working out *why* now.

It's over-produced. Hi dere, Mr Spector! It really is, though. Every space is filled with jangles and sax. There's an orchestra following every mumble of Cohen, and pretty much drowning out his voice. More importantly, it drowns out the lyrics. They're still audible, but it's effort to hear them, because there's too much distraction. And everyone knows that the words are the best bit. But the words have been drowned, and it sounds messy and chaotic and *pointless* - like a bunch of children tootling into brightly-coloured plastic early-learning-centre instruments. It's fun to *do*, but not so appealing listening to it from outside. And even the *quietest* songs are suffused with extraneous noise.

It's really actually quite difficult to tell if the songs themselves are any good, because of all the jangling. But I've gritted my teeth and listened very hard, and I think some of them are, underneath the noise. But some of them are not. Compare, please, Take This Longing with Memories.

Just take this longing from my tongue,
all the useless things my hands have done,
let me see your beauty broken down,
like you would do for one you love.
(Take This Longing - from New Skin for the Old Ceremony)

I said, Look, you don't know me now but very soon you will
So won't you let me see
I said "won't you let me see"
I said "won't you let me see
Your naked body?"
(Memories - from DoaLM)

I might be a teensy bit unfair by using Take This Longing as a comparison. I think it's probably the saddest song in the world, and possibly the most beautiful. But I'm using it anyway - NSfaOC was the last album released before DoaLM, and because both songs are asking (for) the same thing - 'Please have sex with me'. I might again be being a tad unfair to Memories - it's talking about lust, and Take This Longing is heartbreakingly unrequited love. But still! There's a gap the size of an elephant between the two. One can reduce me to tears, and the other just makes me want to cringe a bit.

I also don't much love Don't go home with your hard-on. The title alone should sum it up. I have played it at people simply to demonstate what BAD Leonard Cohen sounds like.

I could, if I chose, pretend I was back at university and do a feminist reading of the lyrics of both of the above. I could probably come up with something saying 'hurrah! ace songs", but in proper English. But I really can't be bothered. A really good song (or poem, or novel) should both grab you straightaway *and* stand up to analysis. These might do the latter, but they certainly don't do the former.

(I suspect that both songs would be far more listen-to-able without the wailings and the sax and choirs.)

So, there's two songs I really don't like, out of the eight on the album. (Actually - add Fingerprints to the list and make it three.) But there are some that really deserve to be GOOD songs. Paper-thin Hotel. The lyrics are really quite beautiful. But as Cohen tells his tale of overheard infidelity, his voice fades out into a cacophany of jangles and twangs. And his voice sounds tinny and messed-about-with to begin with - distancing him from the listener. The worst bit, though - the tune. Please to be understanding that I am a little bit tone deaf (and that it's not the same as being a little bit pregnant). So I can say that it sounds ripped off, and tacky in the extreme, but I cannot tell you why it sounds like that. I do know it makes what should be a good song be a bad song, though.

And most of the album is the same. Lyrics that could make good songs end up warped by the delivery, the production, the melody, until you can only salvage them by muting the sound and reading the words. And whilst the lyrics might be the most important part of a Cohen song, they're not enough to hold the song up.

So, I've had Death of a Ladies Man on repeat as I've written this, but I've just changed over to Various Positions. And the difference is so vast. This is what Leonard Cohen sounds like, and it's comforting and soft and perfect. His style has changed a lot - from folk guitar to synth heaven - over his career, but it's always been beautiful and gentle and sorrowful and soft, with the focus on the words, and the gravel voice delivering them.

And I might be just being terribly conservative, with my disallowing anything but the gravel and the poetry to be Proper Cohen (or even Good Cohen). But no matter how hard I try, or how I listen to it, I cannot like this album.



Am really very not sure this is even poptimistic-tastic.

Comments

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

thats the thing for me, i believed this basic thing for a decade, adn i started to like it after listening to it anew, because its basically a self parody, and ebcause its wrestlign with something outside it self (and hard on is an excellent, wise, parody of his own lavisounsess)

but i remember my intial post being a lot more ambigious than love

[thomppw.livejournal.com]

one gets the feeling that cohen realised there was something ridiculous about himself quite early on, and spent the rest of his career ('live songs' onward, i guess) trying to straddle a line between parodying himself, and uh trying to transcend his own irony - ?

i like the synth pop stuff more than death of a ladies man, because the effort falls more towards the latter.

i get the feeling (without actually LISTENING to them as such) that the last couple records are trying to bank on his cred, to go back to Leonard Look-How-Earnest-I-Am Cohen. but like i say i should listen to them.

how do you feel about 'the future'? that one is my favorite.