1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 146. Leonard Cohen – Songs From A Room (1969)

 

More of the same kind of thing from Cohen as his last album (does he ever do anything that isn’t immediately recognisable as a Leonard Cohen song, I wonder?). If you liked that one, you’ll like this, there are no surprises or anything radically different to his formula of simple musical phrases overlaid with complex lyrics. I noted that the melodies are very folk/country in style with the chords and phrasing. The last song on the album I can easily imagine being sung by Johnny Cash (the country style walking bass helps), while The Old Revolution could be done by The Louvin Brothers, Ramblin’ Jack, younger Bob Dylan, Joan Baez etc.

There’s a pervasive use of the jaw harp that gives this album a slightly different sound to the last, but that’s fundamentally the only difference. Cohen still explores love and loneliness, often in the same line. Cohen explores some of the same dark territory as Lou Reed, with the lyric “I found a silver needle, put it in my harm. It did some good, it did some harm” for example. And the way Cohen says that, it’s so matter of fact – eh, did some good, did some harm, who cares?

When I started this project I toyed with the idea of giving each album ratings, but in the end I didn’t really want to tie the music down to a particular category, one that was specific to my tastes and my mood at that moment in time. It might have gone something like:

5 stars – really liked the album and would listen to the whole thing again before completing this list.

4 stars – liked it, and would probably listen to some tracks on it before completing this list.

3 – liked it, but probably wouldn’t listen to it again before completing the list.

2 – liked it well enough, but can’t really remember any specific track.

1 – disliked it, and listening to it felt like a chore.

This album would be a solid three on that scale, I think. (For the record, about the only one star so far would be the Billie Holiday one. That felt like a struggle. Some of the psychedelic rock ones would rank a two star, and maybe some of the bebop/cubop jazz.)