Tag Archives: Leonard Cohen

Great albums, Leonard Cohen, List, Neil Young

Best albums of 2012: number 6 to 10

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6. Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Psychedelic Pill

@ first listen this immediately felt like vintage Neil Young… and it still does, especially on the 3 best songs: Ramada Inn, Walk like a Giant and Driftin’ Back. The lenght of these 3 songs combined lands at about 60 min! Long guitar driven songs where Crazy Horse holds the fort while a liberated Neil Young shines in this wonderful noisy landscape. These songs are not as good as the classics Cowgirl In The Sand & Down By The River, but they are close… Ramada Inn is closest.

The other songs on the album are much weaker, but who cares… we got 60 bloody minutes in Neil Young & Crazy Horse heaven!

-Egil

Highlights:

  • Egil: Ramada Inn, Walk like a giant and Driftin’ Back
  • Hallgeir: Ramada Inn, Walk like a giant and Driftin’ Back

 

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7. Bill Fay – Life is people

“There are miracles in the strangest of places”

I didn’t know who Bill Fay was until I heard Life is people, but I’ve since read myself up on this so called “cult-artist”, his music is wonderful. This album is long overdue and it is a great come-back record. Bill Fay’s first album since 1971!..and it is only his third proper release.

This is spritual music, music full of wisdom and serene honesty. It’s as if Van Morrison and Randy Newman decided to make music together. The album is loaded with strong melodies and meditative lyrics.

…and Jeff Tweedy guests.

Melodic, spiritual and a fantastic come-back

– Hallgeir

Highlights:

  • Egil: Never Ending Happening, There is a Valley, Jesus Etc & The Healing Day
  • Hallgeir: The Healing Day, There is a valley, The Coast no man can tell and Jesus,  Etc.

 

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8. Leonard Cohen – Old Ideas

I’ve got no future, I know my days are few
(from “Darkness”)

Mortality, Death & loss mixed with Warm Humor….

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit….
(from “Going Home”)

Yearning, spirituality, love, lust, and this heavenly voice (He was 77 when recording the album) that still makes me shiver, his brilliant live-band helps out, this is a Leonard Cohen in top form.

-Egil

Highlights:

  • Egil: Darkness, Going Home & Show Me The Place
  • Hallgeir: Going Home, Anyhow and Darkness

 

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9. Iris Dement – Sings the Delta

“I stopped in the church to pray
it was the middle of the day
and I don’t even know if I believe in God”
– The Kingdom has already come (Iris Dement)

“Iris’s songs talk about isolated memories of life, love and living.”
– John Prine

What a return after 16 years! It is the same theme, love, family, religion, hard life and memories, but Iris Dement it at the top of her game. And her game is at the highest level. The songs are often dark and about death, but at the same time they are achingly beautiful.

Dark traditional country, beautifully sung.

– Hallgeir

Highlights:

  • Egil: The Night I learned how not to pray, Sing the Delta & Before The Colors Fade
  • Hallgeir: The Night I learned how not to pray, Sing the Delta and Morning Glory

 

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10. Calexico – Algiers

Don’t wanna be alone for long
I don’t wanna be on this dark road alone

I read somewhere that Calexico’s music was labeled Tex-Mex Noir, that captures my view on their music to the point. I think Calexico is having a very good period as a band, all albums from 2003’s Feast of Wire have been great. Calexico has relocated to New Orleans for this record, but the band still deftly mixes Americana, mariachi, country, jazz and indie rock to create something instantly recognisable. Thankfully, it sounds like Calexico.

Algiers’ sonic landscape is fascinating, they still manage to evoke a distint feeling of space and place, I get transported to that little bar on the Mexican border, I can still taste the tequila.

Music with a stong sense of place, and they get better and better.

– Hallgeir

Highlights:

  • Egil: Fortune Teller, Epic, Sinner In The Sea
  • Hallgeir: Epic, Fortune Teller and Para

Link to the complete LIST

Great albums, Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen: The Future (24 November, 1992)

Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that’s an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
(“The Future”)

Natural Born Killers – The Future:

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Leonard Cohen, Music Calendar

Today: Leonard Cohen is 78

Like a Bird on a Wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
~Leonard  Cohen, Bird On A Wire

“The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”
― Leonard Cohen

“I don’t remember
lighting this cigarette
and I don’t remember
if I’m here alone
or waiting for someone.”
~Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

From Wikipedia:

Birth name Leonard Norman Cohen
Born 21 September 1934 (age 78)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Genres Folk, folk rock, rock, pop rock,spoken word, synthpop
Occupations Musician, singer-songwriter,poet, novelist
Instruments Vocals, guitar, piano,keyboards, synthesizer
Years active 1956-present
Labels Columbia
Associated acts Sharon Robinson, Jennifer Warnes

Leonard Norman Cohen, CC GOQ (born 21 September 1934) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet, and novelist. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality, and interpersonal relationships. Cohen has been inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honour.

While giving the speech at Cohen’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the “highest and most influential echelon of songwriters.”

The critic Bruce Eder wrote an assessment of Cohen’s overall career in popular music, writing, “[Cohen is] one of the most fascinating and enigmatic. . .singer/songwriters of the late ’60s. . . [and] has retained an audience across four decades of music-making. . . Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon) [in terms of influence], he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century.”

The Academy of American Poets has commented more broadly on Cohen’s overall career in the arts, including his work as a poet, novelist, and songwriter, stating that “[Cohen’s] successful blending of poetry, fiction, and music is made most clear in Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, published in 1993, which gathered more than two hundred of Cohen’s poems . . .several novel excerpts, and almost sixty song lyrics. . .While it may seem to some that Leonard Cohen departed from the literary in pursuit of the musical, his fans continue to embrace him as a Renaissance man who straddles the elusive artistic borderlines.”

From allmusic.com – Bruce Eder:

One of the most fascinating and enigmatic — if not the most successful — singer/songwriters of the late ’60s, Leonard Cohen has retained an audience across four decades of music-making interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon), he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for someone who didn’t even aspire to a musical career until he was in his thirties.
read more over @ allmusic.com 

Bird On A Wire – Live 1972:

Bird on A Wire – Live 2008:

Album of the day – Live In London (2009):

Other September 21:

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