Popular Problems

Popular Problems--note the drolly contradictory title--finds his agreeable baritone growl applied as usual to romantic disappointment and political venality with vivid, jolting metaphors (“I see the ghost of culture, with numbers on his wrist”) cutting to the quick.

Popular Problems is a fine addition to that legacy. At 80 years old, Leonard Cohen is just beginning to hit his stride.

The music, co-created with producer Patrick Leonard, is sparse but energetically diverse, with dips into Memphis soul, country, cabaret and jazzy funk. [No. 115, p.58]

The great just gets greater.

Popular Problems reveals that at 80, Cohen not only has plenty left, but is on top of his game.

There is more raw drama here, a prevailing starkness. [Nov 2014, p.65]

It's surprising, deeply moving and occasionally stunning.

As usual, the freshest-sounding songs are those that tread the farthest from Cohen’s gypsy-folk roots, but here that’s most of them, save the plodding thud of “Samson In New Orleans” and the lilting, acoustic “You Got Me Singing.”

The result is an autumnal masterpiece to rank alongside anything by Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash. [Nov 2014, p.92]

Leonard's half-spoken, slow, dark blues growl is powerful. [Nov 2014, p.86]

His voice remains charming, devilish-yet-wise, and his delivery as beguiling as ever. [Nov 2014, p.109]

The results are extremely life-affirming.

This album feels perfectly formed as it is though.

Mostly, Popular Problems presents Cohen’s wry, wracked recitations against almost ascetic backings overseen by Patrick Leonard, famed for his work with Madonna.

As intimate, beautiful and witty as ever, there’s an impassioned life in Leonard that's missing from many artists a quarter of his age.

Popular Problems, his 13th studio album, has everything of which a latter-day Cohen album is popularly known to be composed: the amelodic, magical croak of Cohen’s own finely aged voice; the hyper-melodic shine of his singers, who have become as integral to Cohen’s project as he himself; a loose, blurring approach to genre and tone.

Those who dismiss his vocals as monotone are missing out on the soulful power he brings to “Did I Ever Love You” or the sly humor he ladles on “Slow.”

This time Cohen tackles some big subjects more abstractly. It’s also one of his most musically rich and varied works.

Nothing here feels laboured: he can deliver songs as beautifully wrought as Samson in New Orleans--a depiction of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina--with a gorgeous understatement that only magnifies its impact.

Like all of Cohen's albums, Popular Problems sounds slick but slightly off-kilter, like someone trying to imitate music they've read about but never actually heard.

Popular Problems flashes the exact same brilliance and suffers the exact same setbacks[as his last album]--namely that Cohen’s vocals continue their dark, leathery tumble into the lowest registers and that the production can be too syrupy, respectively.

Popular Problems is an album that listeners will return to, not just for the poetic depth we’ve come to expect from Mr. Cohen, but also for the sonic variety and virtuosity of his accompanists.

Altogether, Popular Problems is another very good record from someone who many thought might not have such a thing in him, a concise collection of nine tracks curated by a man who has rediscovered his musical spark.

There’s no lesson, no punch line, just the unflinching gaze of someone who’s already seen too much.