“I’m not here to fool you” croons Cohen in his immortal “Hallelujah“. He takes the stage as a recognizable, yet grayed and shaky-handed figure who still outshines his band with modesty and ease. Leonard Cohen has always been a definitive image of honesty, devotion, and self-struggle; an irresistible romantic spinning tales that are equal parts distilled passion, fractured faith, and shameless lust. Each poem is weighted with just enough familiarity to keep it grounded for the listener. Even in a full house, Leonard Cohen can speak to everyone:
“You came to me this morning and you handled me like meat. You’d have to be a man to know how good that feels, how sweet…”
To say that his band was tight and that his music was beautiful seems beside the point. It certainly was, and they certainly were, but when someone as legendary as Mr. Cohen suddenly turns up after so long, there are many more things to be addressed. The first things that come to mind are questions of age: How is he? And how has his music grown? Also… Why now?
“Ladies and gentlemen, I haven’t been around here for some… fourteen or fifteen years,” says a grinning Cohen, his voice deeper and raspier than many listeners expected. He sounded less like himself at times than like a younger Tom Waits or a modern Kurt Wagner. “I was sixty then,” he carried on with his head hung, hat over his heart. “…Just a young man with a crazy dream.”
His music seems especially relevant at the moment. The world is a quickly changing place, with more advancements in health, technology, and communications than can be kept up with. As a result, there are few things more complicated these days than finding a tasteful balance between faith and skepticism. Astonishingly, in an age where more and more feel faced with uncertainty, Cohen can stand unflinchingly in the middle and deliver his own bittersweet mixture. After his brief introduction, he went on to admit to a cheering audience: “I’ve taken a lot of Prozac since then… And I’ve been on a profound exploration of religion and philosophy… But my own cheerfulness always manages to break through.” This was followed immediately by one of the strongest performances of the night: “The Future”
“…Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima! Destroy another fetus now, we don’t like children anyhow! I’ve seen the future, baby! It’s murder!”
The night was defined by his mile-a-minute, tongue-in-cheek revelations as he played through the highlights of his untouchable catalog. It was exciting to see a sprightly, bent-kneed Cohen challenging himself throughout his performance. At seventy-four, he still managed to skip to and from the stage for the intermission and each of his four encores. He meshed well with his accompaniment, allowing each section to shine when appropriate. One of the great unexpected joys of the show was long-time collaborator and backup singer Sharon Robinson, whose honey-voice stole the show on several occasions.
Cohen donned a cowboy hat for his final number, flirtatiously declaring “I’ve tried to leave you a hundred times…” Afterward, he gave the audience his humble gratitude and leapt from the stage one last time. He gave everyone a lot to remember.
