Music: Leonard Cohen

By Jeffrey Overstreet

Rock stars can make a record a year. Pop is easy. Poetry takes time.

"I've seen the future, it is murder," Cohen sang, nine years ago, and these days that seems all too true. On his new album, "Ten New Songs", Cohen delves deeper, finding richer ground in his own haunted history and in spiritual dialogues with the Divine. The record plays like a religious diary, in which human love eventually fails to hold back the tide of loneliness and dissatisfaction, but Divine Love persists as an agent of grace and hope in the midst of trial.

The trial sounds like old age, both in his voice and his lyrics. He's preoccupied with memory, seeing the failures of human endeavor and the lasting influence of God. He sounds content to whisper, letting the language carry the urgency rather than the singing. Questing for satisfaction in human relationships only leaves him exhausted and more thirsty than when he began.

Music: Leonard Cohen - Continued >>