| Hey, fine, Ian, a broad consensus between us. It took a long time tell that could happen, didn´t it? My rating does only differ slightly - A+, A and A+. An interesting phenomenon: if you ever loved this music, it will never bore you. It has always to say something to you. It´s not kind of: "oh, well, golden times, this master of melancolia, sweet and bitter memories and so on" - these songs can be an constant source of revelations. |
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| I would like to add: there is no reason for skip to the third album as "the essential Cohen". I agree this is an absolute masterpiece, but the other two albums come very, very close. There is a sense of wonder spread over all these works that makes it hard to only ignore one single song. There is another thing that is so fine and makes these albums timeless: even in its most melodramatic metaphors, the singer delivers everything with understatement and a small detachment from himself, call it irony, whatever. |
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| It's actually that detachment that makes me not a huge fan of Cohen's first couple of albums... I prefer Cohen as a cynic (see, also, much of what Mike Powell has written on him) to an ironist. But yeah, they're still good albums - when I give my least favourite of his works a B-, he's on pretty solid ground with me. |
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