Hoarse Foreman of the Apocalypse

Rip It Up, Issue 11, 1 May 1978, Page 14

Hoarse Foreman of the Apocalypse

Death of a Ladies’ Man Leonard Cohen

CBS I am sure that one of the principal attractions of Leonard Cohen's first three albums was their perverse accessability. Despite the determined obliqueness of the words, the songs were performed in such a way that a whole generation of girls with long, shiny hair could take up their Yamaha classic guitars and plunk out a fair rendition. Ideal for bed-sit identification points. Cohen’s fourth studio album, the notably less successful, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, stretched this premise somewhat by the inclusion of a fuller band, and then there was a long period of silence. On Death of a Ladies’ Man, we are confronted with a paradox. At last Cohan has bowed to some of the dictates of the popular song. Without losing his rather overbearing sense of irony, he has shed the more impenetrable lyrical mannerisms of his older songs. At the same time, he has given up on the readily-identifiable sound of these songs. By teaming with Phil Spector (even to the extent of sharing all the song-writing credits) and a whole army of New York session men, he produces a huge,leaden sound, which far outstrips even the Spector-John Lennon albums. The voice is still there, but now it rides on an extraordinary backing of Spector’s teen-dream melodies played by no fewer than fifty-nine musicians (often it seems that they are all playing at once). I’m not altogether sure who is going to buy this album. After all, all those girls with

the shiny locks are long gone, and their Yamaha guitars bequeathed to their little brothers to pose with in front of the bedroom mirror. I hope somebody out there can temper a taste for the melancholic with an affection for the Shangri Las. Francis Stark