Show of Hands

[linmag]

I saw this duo live at the end of last year, and have mentioned them to a few people privately since. They write a lot of their own songs, and also perform some traditional songs, and a few cover versions.

I treated myself to a couple of albums from their back catalogue with some money I was given for Christmas, and last night I listened to them for the first time. One of them has a track called "First They Take Manhattan", and I wondered if it had anything to do with Leonard's song. It turned out to be a misnamed (but nevertheless very good) cover version, recorded live in November 2001. They introduced it as "a song written by Leonard Cohen during the cold war", so they apparently see it as some sort of paranoid the-russians-are-coming thing. I had never looked at it that way, and I think it's too narrow a view of the song, but it's an interesting angle nevertheless.

They also have a song called The Crooked Man, that they introduce in concert as being about George W., though that would not necessarily be immediately apparent from the lyrics. If you are interested, there are two versions of this song, the live one and a much blander studio version, available as downloads on their website at http://www.showofhands.co.uk

[linmag]

I listened to the CD again properly last night, and realised that I did the band an injustice. It turns out they had recorded Leonard's song on a previous album, but had decided to include it in the 2001 tour "for obvious reasons". As this track was recorded in November 2001, two months post 9/11 the reasons are indeed obvious, and should have been so to me first time around.