The Future

Gets four stars from me.

LC is one of those singer-songwriters who seem to elicit strong opinions; there are those who really like him and those who can't stand him, but I haven't run across many who feel lukewarm about him either way. You'll rarely hear said about Leonard Cohen, "Yeah, he's ok."

Accordingly, listening to any Leonard Cohen album should give one an idea of how they'll feel about him in general. This being a later album, it's more highly produced than the early albums, many of which have an almost raw sound to them.

I didn't like all the songs equally when I first listened to it, but repeated listenings have had nearly all of them grow on me to one degree or another. My least favorite is his cover of Irving Berlin's "Always", where Cohen tries to both undercut and transcend Berlin's cloyingly sentimental lyrics with a sly, lounge-lizard cool. Just doesn't work for me.

On the other hand, "Closing Time" utterly succeeds in pulling off the same trick in reverse; undercutting and transcending a Country Top 40 sound with sneakily subversive lyrics, suggesting something just a wee bit more existential than just another tears-in-my-beer lament over a broken love affair. "Looks like freedom but it feels like death / it's something in between, I guess / it's closing time." skirts dangerously close to the edge of Deep Thoughts.

"Waiting for the Miracle" is one of the standouts of the album, and certainly the darkest. It evokes a bleakness in the vein of an Ennio Morricone score for a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was used, in fact, as the opening theme for Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killer's", which also used the album's title cut, "The Future", as it's closing credits theme. Another upbeat piece subverted by dark, jagged lyrics.

The other cuts are all good, with my personal other real standout being his "Anthem", which is as close to spiritual hopefulness as you're likely to hear LC get, a quiet, nearly peaceful ode to faith in the Good, and True.

If you like Leonard Cohen, you'll get him on this album, if you don't know him and want to check him out, this is as good an album as any of his to start with, and you'll certainly get to hear him in his stride. He hits it enough times here.

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