By Brad Buchholz | Thursday, April 2, 2009, 02:12 AM
Leonard Cohen at the Long Center
Leonard Cohen treated us to a night of blue elegance Wednesday night at the Long Center (he plays a second show Thursday night). More than any song, any moment, I’ll savor the evening for its spirit, for its languid, stylish, melancholy tone. That, and the sheer majesty of the Cohen musical canon, laid out over the course of a three-hour concert that featured four encores.
Cohen’s concert wasn’t so much a presentation of songs as a riveting poetry reading with a klezmer-caberet vibe, a little bluesy, a little jazzy and, above all, literate. For decades, his touring bands have taken pride in being “the quietest band in America.” We hear the words. Cohen’s drummer, Austin’s Rafael Gayol, likes to say it can get so quiet you can almost hear dust collide.
Yes.
Cohen, 74, is thinner, grayer, than that “60-year-old kid with a crazy dream” that passed through Austin on the 1988 and 1993 concert tours. But his ocean-deep bass voice - and his will - are strong. There were moments, in the muscular encore tunes “First We Take Manhattan” and “So Long, Marianne” when Cohen sang powerfully over the top of his angelic, swaying troupe of background singers, led by Sharon Robinson. If you shut your eyes: The voice and the energy suggested a singer whose heart was completely in the present, not the past.
There were great moments: “Bird on a Wire” was so delicate, so rich with quiet space and stately grace, timeless as moonlight. “Anthem,” the closer of the first set, was transcendent, orchestral, presented in celestial light. When Cohen sang “Can’t run no more with the lawless crowd/while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud,” it was not with resignation, but with grit and purpose.
Well, let’s see: Charley and Hattie Webb, his two new background singers, coyly removed their jackets - and then spun cartwheels when Cohen sang the line “You’ll see your women hanging upside down” (or was it “the blizzard of the world has overturned your soul”?) during “The Future.” “Hallelujah” drew a standing ovation in the second set.
Cohen’s spoken word rendition of “Recitation with N.L.”, poetry set to quavering synthesized keyboards, was a dramatic highpoint in the second set. There was a huge communal sigh in the house - more striking than any applause - when Cohen ended the first stanza with these words: “my mirrored twin, my next of kin, I’d know you in my sleep/. And who but you would take me in, a thousand kisses deep.”
A last word about the staging, the music, and the role of Cohen’s musical director - bassist Roscoe Beck. After working with Cohen for three decades, Beck has skillfully melded his own sophisticated instincts with Cohen’s lyrical power. Beck likes the blues, and he likes jazz. Both energies were palpable Wednesday. The band’s use of Hammond B-3 organ plays to both the sensual and sacred currents in Cohen’s music.
Beck knows this in his head. We felt it in our hearts. It was a soft, lyrical, lovely night.
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. Takes me back to both Montreal and New York.
