Here are more reviews of the Dublin concerts:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/fea ... 95406.html
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Review
TONY CLAYTON-LEA reviews Leonard Cohen at the O2, Dublin
WHEN LOU Reed – another master of life’s troubles and woes – inducted Leonard Cohen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, he said: “We’re so lucky to be alive at the same time Leonard Cohen is.”
It’s a good point, because there are very few music artists of Cohen’s age and status left by which to remind us that we are slipping out of the Golden Age of Popular Music into muddied waters of no small depth.
This is not to say, by any means, that there isn’t a wealth of brilliant new music around; it’s just that Cohen – unlike, say, Bob Dylan – appears to have no interest in deconstructing the blueprint or redefining the mythology.
He doesn’t mess around – his early material (some would say his best-loved, which has earned him the indelible title of The Bard of Bedsit) such as Suzanne , Sisters of Mercy and So Long Marianne has aged much better than those of most of his contemporaries because the work originally existed outside the usual parameters of folk rock.
Some 40 years ago Cohen was no musician scrabbling around for words to fit tunes; he was (and, arguably, still is) a poet, whose exacting, precise and subtle output was high on quality and low on ego.
More than 40 years on, and the song (as well as the casually strewn philosophy and the lugubrious baritone) remains the same – still as simplistic, sombre and sensual, yet also strangely, magnetically comforting.
Forced back into touring in order to stave off the onset of dire financial problems (caused by a period of mismanagement), there is, perhaps, a sense of lack of enthusiasm.
But only a sense – it flits in and out of the set like an aural aurora borealis, and before you know what has happened, you’ve slipped into the refined swing of things and you’re stuck there until the song finishes. The dignity, poise and graciousness of the enterprise impresses almost as much as the music, which is dressed up – like the musicians, singers and the occasional roadie – in a sharp suit and an optional smart hat.
Are there some tickets left? Yes, there are, so do yourself a favour.
Leonard Cohen performs at the O2 this Wednesday (sold out) and Thursday (see Ticketmaster for tickets 0818-719300).
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment ... 38290.html
Review of the week: Leonard Cohen * * * *
The O2, Dublin
By Ed Power
Friday July 24 2009
Leonard Cohen dashes from the wings, if not spryly then with more vigour than you expect of pop's 74-year-old laureate of angst, and plunges into Dance Me To The End of Love, his distinctive half-spoken croon brimming with wisdom, wit and bittersweet humour. Wearing a tilted fedora and a priest-like black ensemble, his features creased like faded parchment, Cohen cuts an elusive figure. His lyrics are often devastatingly bleak, yet his interaction with his sprawling band is playful (he's forever going down on bended knee), his few asides to the crowd imbued with grandfatherly charm.
He is in Dublin for the first date of an astonishing four-night stand (after which he skips up to Belfast) and, while you could slice through the air of reverence in the room with a knife, he still seems determined to win over fan and agnostic alike.
Flanked by a virtuosic eight-piece (including his songwriting partner Sharon Robinson and veteran Spanish guitarist Javier Mas), Cohen proceeds gracefully through a greatest hits set, moving from the Nick Cave-esque judder of Everybody Knows to the elegiac quasi-gospel In My Secret Life to the hymnal pathos of Hallelujah (a song desecrated so often Cohen has actually issued a public plea that fellow artists stop covering it).
Though the arrangements are immaculate, soul-sapping slickness never sets in, partly because Cohen himself is such an unusual performer, a raven-like presence who hovers over the music even when his players take centre stage during many of the instrumental breaks.
... amazing!
