Recitation, Leonard Cohen

I've been wondering when Leonard Cohen would turn up.  I'm struggling here to limit myself in expressing how much I love Leonard Cohen.  I want to just write and write about him, about all the ways his music makes me feel.  I'm going to concentrate on what this track does for me but I'm really aware that if you've not listened to - or dismissed - him before this track, it might not make a lot of sense.


Many fans of Leonard Cohen feel deeply indebted to his accountant.  After years of making some of the best poetry set to music, and some of the best music with incidental poetry, and some of the funniest songs ever written (believe me) Leonard Cohen had all but retired.  But then he found out that his accountant had made off with pretty much all his cash, and hence this tour.  This was recorded in London, the way he works a huge cavern like the O2 Arena, making it sound like you're hearing him in an intimate environment, is masterful.  Here's a 72 year old man, recognising his decline, understanding who he is and communicating it with humility and beauty.

From the opening couplet which is filthy and laugh out loud, to lines like "all he is, and all he was, a thousand kisses deep", there's most of humanity here.  There are a couple of jarring moments - and a couple of points where you'd be forgiven for thinking that he's a dirty old man.  But then he can deliver a line like "The autumn moved across your skin, got something in my eye", and I'm pretty sure something gets in my eye at the same time.  

Is this a song?  The repeated "A thousand kisses deep" comes from a song of the same title, but that's much more melodic. (There's a second embedded question here - is Leonard Cohen melodic?).  Is it a poem being recited with some backing music?  I think it is something a little more than that.  There is a melody - I've listened to this many times, and I know how this sounds.  I don't know if it sounded the same every night of his tour, but I suspect it did - the way that the poem is delivered is not optional.  It's a song.  A very unusual, beautiful, odd song.