Leonard Cohen Concert a Lesson in Cool

February 07, 2009 10:00pm

LEONARD Cohen is 74 years old and still skips on and off the stage.

LEONARD COHEN
Sandalford Winery
Saturday, February 7, 2009.

Cohen’s still filled with an enviable boyish energy and the childlike entrances and exits suggests he’s still loving life.

But after more than 40 years as the butt of jokes about creating music to slit your wrists to, he still has the ability to show the difference between Leonard Cohen the writer and Leonard Cohen the performer. His songs, at least the most famous of them from the ’60s, may have been the perfect companions for generations of miserable teenagers, music that we typically listen to in solitude.  But Cohen’s genius is in making them songs to be shared communally. He’s halfway there with his unforgettable melodies, but it’s his delivery that declares him such a captivating performer.

In his first trip to Perth in nearly 24 years, Cohen pulled a line from Chelsea Hotel #2 - about a tryst with Janis Joplin while he was enjoying the first flush of pop stardom. It was about how she said she preferred handsome men, “but for me you would make an exception” and delivered it slow and measured like it was a punchline in the world’s funniest joke.

The response from the capacity crowd at Sandalford suggested that at that moment it just might have been. Similarly, when he described being born with a golden voice in Tower Of Song he emphasised the phrase to offer his vocal limitations as the source of a laughter.

It’s true Cohen would have surely starved had he tried to make a living as an interpreter of other people’s songs, but his voice has lost little of its presence over the years. With no range to speak of, Cohen practically speaks the words - but he does so with alluring command.

In a near three hour performance last night, he took back Hallelujah from Jeff Buckley, took back Bird on A Wire from Joe Cocker, took back Suzanne from Judy Collins and reclaimed First We Take Manhattan from Jennifer Warnes.

In short, he has given these songs to the world, but showed time and again has the power to take them back any time he chooses.

If his voice is a simple tool, the same can not be said for his band, who were so good Cohen introduced them twice. His frequent collaborator Sharon Robinson stood in a vocal trio with the Webb sisters (who turned a cartwheel in The Future) adding a classy sheen to the singing.

The musical arrangements found a sweet spot between the soul/gospel sound of Neil Larsen’s Hammond organ, the Gypsy guitar stylings of Javier Mas and the Nashville-influenced picking of Bob Metzger on Telecaster and pedal steel.

The immaculately turned out Cohen frequently knelt in front of his band. From the audience, it wasn’t clear if he was doing it for affect or to read a teleprompter, but it didn’t matter. It added rather than detracted from the performance.

Like everything Cohen did, it looked cool. Then again, if a septuagenarian can skip and look cool, everything else is a piece of cake.

Polly Coufos - news.com.au