A song that is useful, that touches somebody, must be measured by that utility alone. | | | | | Leonard Cohen, November 2013. (Adrian Thomson/Flickr) | | | | |  | “A song that is useful, that touches somebody, must be measured by that utility alone.”
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| | rantnrave:// LEONARD COHEN lived a long life, an adventurer's life, an artist's life, a productive life. He worked at an astonishingly high level into his 82nd year with his guitars and synths and notebooks and his deeply weathered voice and his deceptively classic gift for melody and songform. He left us with songs, from "SUZANNE" and "FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT" to "HALLELUJAH" and "EVERYBODY KNOWS" and so many more, that are indelibly burned into a particular corner of our culture that few other singer-songwriters have dared to inhabit, or *could* inhabit. He was, to borrow a recently popular political term of art, the greatest, or at least very close to that. And he left behind one of the best death-obsessed swan-song albums ever released by an artist who literally had days to live—but not necessarily the best one of those to be released in 2016. Be gone, please, 2016. Be gone, you dark, suffocating year that seems determined to drag every living creature underwater. Cohen, for his part, was "ready to die," as he famously told the NEW YORKER's DAVID REMNICK in a definitive profile published a month ago. But then, a few days later, he told a LOS ANGELES audience, "I think I was exaggerating. I’ve always been into self-dramatization... I intend to stick around until 120." That will, unfortunately, not come to pass, but YOU WANT IT DARKER, his final album, says goodbye with an octogenarian grace that suggests he knew how to ease his way into the next station, as if he really was just passing through. RIP... REMNICK's epic profile is a perfect place to begin your Cohen reading. BOB DYLAN speaks at length to Remnick about that underrated melodic gift; his line-by-line analysis of the musical structure of "SISTERS OF MERCY" is breathtaking criticism. We've compiled several decades' worth of Cohen literature in our REDEF MusicSET "Remembering Leonard Cohen," which we'll keep adding stories to over the next few days... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from A TRIBE CALLED QUEST, EMELI SANDÉ, SAD13, DANIEL BACHMAN, STING, SLEIGH BELLS, SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO, OLLY MURS, BODY/HEAD, MARTHA WAINWRIGHT, ENNIO MORRICONE, JALEN SANTOY, JAMES CHANCE & THE CONTORTIONS, RONNIE DUNN and WAKRAT. And for the OLDCHELLA demo: 36 CDs' worth of live DYLAN, various audio/video configurations of the STONES in CUBA, and one unearthed disc of pre-DEAD JERRY GARCIA and ROBERT HUNTER. And more. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| | | hey, that's no way to say goodbye |
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 | REDEF |
| He was born with the gift of a golden voice, a dark, sexy bass instrument that attracted decades' worth of rock fans and paramours to him with almost religious fervor. And, hallelujah, he left behind 50 years' worth of indelible songs. | | |
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 | RIP Leonard Cohen |
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