You Want It Darker

You Want It Darker could be addressed to fans pining for a return to Cohen’s bleakest songwriting; or a lover, or a higher power.

You could never describe You Want It Darker as merely more of the same. As striking as the sense that its themes are of a piece with the rest of Cohen’s oeuvre is the sense of an artist willing to move forward.

Leonard Cohen’s 14th studio album is a bleak masterpiece for hard times from pop’s longest-serving poet.

This is one of his most intense albums. It feels personal too. [Nov 2016, p.90]

You Want It Darker is better than either of those records [Old Ideas and Popular Problems], and may contain the best music he has created since Various Positions came out in 1984.

Using his remaining time, he’s not only putting his house in order, he’s tidying up ours too. You Want It Darker prepares us for his departure and, in turn, shows us how it’s done, so we have a road map--pockmarked by land mines as it is--in place when we reach that stage.

On his 14th studio album, the songwriting maestro--still vital at 82--is a lion in winter, his lyrics heavy with God and sex and death and his legendary voice scraped down to a subterranean rumble.

Through the dark, Cohen smartly questions everything from the prickly possibilities of future romance to, quite possibly, the sacred Zen Buddhist religion where he once solidly and stoically placed his faith. [No. 138, p.51]

Sonically, there isn’t the same sense of startling reinvention with the stately sound of You Want It Darker, although it’s undeniably grander, lusher, more beautiful than its forbears; its melancholy mixture of string laments, orchestral flourishes and sombre choirs virtually compel you to bow your head in hushed reverence.

It feels like the most human of his late works, with acoustic instrumentation carefully balanced alongside drum programming and vintage keyboards.

These songs have the funereal grace of David Bowie’s elegant final goodbyes (The Next Day and Blackstar), as well as Bob Dylan’s trio of reflective, mournful albums that helped usher in--and bring some clarity to--the fractious start of the 21st Century (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times).

What You Want It Darker accomplishes isn’t just powerful instrumentation in minimalism, or strong poeticism, but that of an artist baring their soul, and the sharing of sincere truth.

A taut display of his dry wit and ability to wring beauty out of even the most harrowing human ideals.

It's become a cliche to treat every latter-day Cohen album like a potential swansong but it's hard to imagine a richer, finer or more satisfying finale than this. [Nov 2016, p.18]

This is not one of those waiting-at-death's-door late-career farewells that have become a cottage industry since Johnny Cash closed his career with a series of acoustic albums recorded by producer Rick Rubin. It instead presents an artist still near the height of his considerable powers

Cohen is not a songwriter who panders; he speaks above us, sometimes quite literally to higher forms, but also to universality instead of common denominator. Topicality, to him, remains somewhere around the Romantic era. But Cohen is also keen to experiment here.

He’s choosing to examine his life (and life’s work) rather than ponder the abyss. That ensures You Want It Darker doesn’t feel like an ending, as much as it feels like one more chapter in Cohen’s songbook.

There’s rarely been an addition to Cohen’s canon that couldn’t be deemed essential, but in truth, none could be called more revelatory or revealing than this.

You Want It Darker is a succinct journey into the psyche of a man who knows his career is at an end, but that isn’t going to stop him going out on a high.

It’s as strong a collection as any of his in recent times and tied together of course by that voice--deeply authoritative, unfathomably evocative and really quite irreplaceable.

You Want It Darker is frightening, aching and, finally, sad. But, on this gorgeous, essential record, the sadness is illuminated. It glows.

Following a string of records that have each felt like a swan song, You Want It Darker may be Cohen's most haunting LP.

Despite his long list of gripes, sins, and losses, Cohen's instinctive opening to whatever light remains prevails on You Want It Darker.

You Want It Darker is a strong record, with an even stronger message.

Deeply ambiguous yet wittily epigrammatic, You Want It Darker is all one might want from a final testament, short of cosy reassurance. [Dec 2016, p.114]

Gently marching strings furnish an aptly martial underscoring for the conflict imagery of “Treaty”, the latest of Cohen’s romantic mea culpas, which reveals how, for a Great Seducer, love is an essentially narcissistic, even solipsistic, pastime, its protagonist apologising “for that ghost I made you be”. It’s just one of several sharp, stinging twists casting new and unusual shadows on old themes in You Want It Darker, culminating in the mordant, bitter advice of “Steer Your Way.”