Leonard Cohen: Songs Of Love and Hate (Remastered + Expanded) CD Track Listing

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Leonard Cohen Songs Of Love and Hate (Remastered + Expanded) (1971)
Songs Of Love and Hate (Remastered + Expanded)\n2007 Columbia/Legacy\n\nOriginally Released 1971\nCD Edition Released February 7, 1995\nRemastered + Expanded CD Edition Released March 27, 2007\n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW: Songs of Love and Hate is one of Leonard Cohen's most emotionally intense albums -- which, given the nature of Cohen's body of work, is no small statement. While the title Songs of Love and Hate sums up the album's themes accurately enough, it's hardly as simple as that description might lead you to expect -- in these eight songs, "love" encompasses the physical ("Last Year's Man"), the emotional ("Famous Blue Raincoat"), and the spiritual ("Joan of Arc"), and the contempt in songs like "Dress Rehearsal Rag" and "Avalanche" is the sort of venom that can only come from someone who once cared very deeply. The sound of the album is clean and uncluttered, and for the most part the music stays out of the way of the lyrics, which dominate the songs. Thankfully, Cohen had grown noticeably as a singer since his first two albums, and if he hardly boasts a range to rival Roy Orbison here, he is able to bring out the subtleties of "Joan of Arc" and "Famous Blue Raincoat" in a way his previous work would not have led you to expect. And while Bob Johnston's production is spare, it's spare with a purpose, letting Cohen's voice and guitar tell their stories and using other musicians for intelligent, emotionally resonant punctuation (Paul Buckmaster's unobtrusive string arrangements and the use of a children's chorus are especially inspired). And Songs of Love and Hate captured Cohen in one of his finest hours as a songwriter, and the best selections (especially "Famous Blue Raincoat," "Joan of Arc," and "Love Calls You by Your Name") rank with the most satisfying work of his career. If Songs of Love and Hate isn't Cohen's best album, it comes close enough to be essential to anyone interested in his work. In 2007, Sony BMG began reissuing Leonard Cohen's back catalog in remastered and expanded editions, including an upgraded version of Songs of Love and Hate. The disc includes a bonus track, an alternate version of "Dress Rehearsal Rag" that had been recorded during the sessions for 1969's Songs from a Room. It's dominated by the same uncertain vocal delivery and curious arrangements that flawed that album, though it certainly makes for an interesting comparison to the later take on Songs of Love and Hate. The new disc comes in a deluxe book-style package that includes song lyrics, additional artwork and photos, and an essay on the album from music journalist Anthony DeCurtis.] -- Mark Deming\n\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nThe Rain Falls Down on Last Year's Man, February 20, 2007 \nBy Jim Doss (Sykesville, MD United States)\n\nThe first song sets the tone for the album. Avalanche is just what it sounds like... a man's life caving in on top of him sung with bitterness, bile and sarcasm, his trademark guitar propelling the ballad forward, stark and primal. And it only gets better from there. Cohen's voice is raw and powerful on every track, often framed by the celestial chorus of women's voices that offer a sharp contract to his. Well know songs on the CD include Famous Blue Raincoat and Joan of Arc. But the lesser known songs are gems in their own right. Especially gloomy are the self-mocking Last Year's Man and suicidal fantasy Dress Rehearsal Rag, both with brilliant lyrics. \n\nDeservedly the CD continues to grow in stature over the years. This music is sure to be a party killer, but perfect to listen to when you're alone, depressed, angry, smoldering with love and hate.... an anthem to the dark genius of Cohen. \n\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nDark and Brilliant, January 28, 2007 \nBy Philip J. Brubaker (Chapel Hill, NC United States)\n\nThis is not the kind of album you want to put on when having a cocktail party. It's alone music. But it is a harrowing, brilliant album. Songs of Love and Hate begins with Cohen's trademark flamenco guitar and winds it's way through stark children's choruses and spine-tingling string accompaniments. But Cohen's startling lyrics take center stage. He is a poet on caliber with Bob Dylan. This album is so uncommercial, however, that it is out of print. I got my copy on eBay. The album hits a peak with track 4, "Diamonds In the Mine" a raucous, fun number where Cohen sounds dangerously unhinged. Just as it sounds like he's lost control, we return to his solo acoustic guitar on track 5, "Dress Rehearsal Rag." The towering, depressing "Famous Blue Raincoat" is featured on every Cohen retrospective and tribute album (of which there are several). It starts out with the poet intoning, "It's four in the morning, the end of September, I'm writing you now, just to see if you're better..." There's something about being awake at four in the morning. It's not the night, and it's not really the morning either. Most people are not awake at this hour. Only tortured loners like Leonard Cohen. SOLAH concludes with the elegiac "Joan of Arc" which, if you haven't slit your wrists by then, will send you off with the feeling that you have just heard something raw and painfully honest from a great songwriter. The album has a very cohesive quality, as if it could have been recorded all in one night. The mood captured is consistently somber but it has the feeling of a stark, emotional moment in time that was as rare as it was brief. \n\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nLeonard's pain is no credential, but his insight is., March 16, 2006 \nBy Raphael Zimmerman (Prescott, AZ USA)\n\nLeonard Cohen's third album is Emo before Emo music, or rather the original example of masterful, subdued, confessional songwriting. It is a spiritual precursor to the works of Roger Waters, Kurt Cobain, and Trent Reznor, except with three measures of subtlety for each measure of rage. In "Last Year's Man," the Canadian poet uses only abstract symbolism to reflect upon a love affair with a woman who had many other lovers, (I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark/ One-by-one she had to tell them that her name was Joan of Arc/ I was in that army, yes I stayed a little while) yet perfectly conveys the awkwardness of the situation, his regret, and his lingering admiration of the woman's refreshingly anti-feminine militarism. This trick of telling an entire story by jumping into the middle of it is repeated in "Famous Blue Raincoat", written in the form of a forgiving letter to an old friend who convinced the narrator's wife to leave him, before abandoning her himself. The narrator's sadness becomes palpable to the listener precisely because he is trying so hard not to express it, yet feels compelled to address issues from which has has never emotionally recovered. \n\nThis album possesses the dark, elaborate quality characteristic of the catalog of Tori Amos, who covered Famous Blue Raincaot, and with the originality of Leonard's work, it is unsurprising to discover how widely influential it has been to subsequent artists. And yet Leonard's work, and this album in particular, possess a brand of originality that is Promethian. Leonard speaks as a demigod, giving to mankind an image of itself more terrifyingly accurate than mankind's self-portrait. Leonard doesn't really create at all; He shows what has always existed within the human heart, and leaves his listeners wondering why they couldn't see it without his illumination. \n\nA strict, consistent code of signs and symbols dominates the lyrical narrative of the album: Joan of Arc as the the tendency to escape vulnerability by championing dominance, the cripple as the person who has lost sexual empowerment, perhaps through direct adoration ironically impacting lovers as egregious, fire as the arbitrary melodrama we employ to resist the simplicity of affection. It is poetry about postmodern predicaments, which escapes the disempassioned drabness of postmodern literature by adhering temerously to romantic conventions. Unlike the beat poets and more mainstream folk singers of his era (Dylan et al.), Cohen's sentimentality is expressed rather than assumed. There is no glorification of the fashionable profundity of drug use, aimless traveling, or use of fashion or pop-culture cantrips to make his narrators accessible. The accesibility comes from his concern for interpersonal solidarity, and the universal emotions stigmatized by society and (at least in 1971) absent in commercial music. Many so-called "emotional" bands of today would do well to take a page from his literary, reason-tempered songbook. \n\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nDeath Folk, December 15, 2003 \nBy K. H. Orton (New York, NY USA)\n\nWithout a doubt this is Cohen's darkest, most ambitious & quite possibly most depressing record. I think he inadvertently created a whole new genre here---Death Folk. Self proclaimed fans range from Kurt Cobain to Nick Cave. So, if you're looking for the flower child nostalgia of of "Suzanne", proceed immediately to the latest greatest hits collection. \n\n"Avalanche" definitely veers on the hate side of things. Lyrically speaking, it's like stumbling across Richard The Third in an abandoned mineshaft. Toss in some stark, flamenco guitar & you get the picture. A dark start to a creepy, often disturbing album. \n\n"Last Year's Man" is a fitting tribute to any old Casanova whose seen his 15 minutes come & go. The only thing missing here is a knout & a hairshirt. On "Dress Rehearsal Rag", the whole song reeks of dried blood, bandages & transient hotels. The only real upbeat number is, "Diamonds In The Mine", where he sings like he just gargled with Drano. \n\n"Love Calls Your Name" has to be one of Cohen's most epic & underated ballads, while "Famous Blue Raincoat" is one of his more well known. It's certainly the only song off here ever included on a Best Of. \n\nThe purvasive atmosphere of jaded sarcasm comes to a fore with, "Sing Another Song, Boys" & by the time he gets to "Joan Of Arc" you'll be reaching for ABBA's GREATEST HITS. \n\nPretentious, cynical & pissed off---this is the sound of Cohen strumming his six-string with an open vein. He's never done anything like it, before or since. I suppose only Lou Reed's BERLIN comes close. \n\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nA Mesmerizing Look At The Mad Genius Of Leonard Cohen!, August 19, 2000 \nBy Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States)\n\nLeonard Cohen has been described as the poet of existential despair, and none of his several vintage albums is more edgy and desperate than this thirty year old offering with its white on black lettering and stark unshaven images of a man on the very verge of madness. On the back cover of the original album was large block-lettered script reading " They locked up a man/Who wanted to rule the world/ The fools/ They locked up the wrong man". Ah, such saintly pretensions! Yet Cohen is mad like a fox, cleverly setting his snares for those fools who don't recognize his own magnetic powers, charisma, and outright poetic genius. In "Avalanche" he sets the first proper insane tone, carefully evoking his curious blend of old world images and slamming them against contradictory notions like sexy religiosity, employing profoundly arcane symbols alongside profane contemporary longings. \nHe continues his mad mystic pounding on the door of his inner longings with "Last Year's Man". His own comment on the song is that he always waits for the children's chorus. It and he are both haunting here, his use of old testament language powerfully drawing a word picture that leaves one gasping for air. "Dress Rehearsal Rag" is an ironic improvisation of an old poem from the "Spice Box of Earth" book he first published in the late 1950s, while "Love Calls You By Your Name" is another evocative and mysterious display of his amazing poetic genius put to good musical use. I have always loved "Famous Blue Raincoat", a long and revealing tale of a man writing to a old friend who cuckolded him with his wife, filling him in on his own feelings, perceptions, and surprising take on the affair. It is hard to describe "Joan Of Arc", except to say she is an emblematic figure to Cohen, a kind of sexy virgin, a saintly vixen, a womanly icon embodying both the purity and prurience of the world in a single ethereal figure. Of course he wants to bed her. Cohen is nothing if not hypnotically suggestive, and he takes one on a mind's ride that makes you want to either jump off a bridge or scream in delight. This is a superb album by a consummate artist, whose voice and style fit his evocative message like a well-worn leather glove. Black on black, of course. Enjoy! \n\n\nHalf.com Details \nContributing artists: Charlie Daniels \nProducer: Bob Johnston \n\nAlbum Notes\nPersonnel: Leonard Cohen (vocals, acoustic guitar); Ron Cornelius (acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Bubba Fowler (acoustic guitar, banjo, bass instrument); Charlie Daniels (acoustic guitar, fiddle, bass instrument); Bob Johnston (piano); Carolyn Hanney, Susan Mussmano (background vocals).\n\nIt doesn't get darker than this. Though Leonard Cohen had already established himself as the doyen of doom with his first two albums, his third, SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE, finds him kicking off the 1970s with the sharpest repudiation of the '60s eace and love/flower-power ethic the world had yet seen from the "sensitive troubadour" corner of the music map. Though it's not really a "concept album," SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE feels like a guided tour through one man's battle-scarred love life. The utter emotional degradation of "Avalanche," the suicidal frenzy of "Dress Rehearsal Rag," and the bitter regret of "Last Year's Man" all sound like stops on the same ill-fated journey. The arrangements are wisely based around Cohen's world-weary voice and hypnotic acoustic-guitar patterns, with occasional orchestrations rising like dark clouds in the background. Possibly Cohen's finest album, LOVE AND HATE would stand as a monument to explorers of the musical Dark Side for decades to come--such as Nick Cave, who memorably covered "Avalanche"--and to anyone nursing a bitter, broken heart.\n\nIndustry Reviews\n...the record as a whole has not the charm that his first develops after a long while--it is not as likable, because it is frequently down and out depressing...\nRolling Stone (09/02/1971)\n\nRanked #5 in The NME Top 30 Heartbreak Albums - ...[His] most vicious, lonely and unforgiving album....Much, much more than the sum of its dark, monumentally crafted parts, and a soundtrack to a generation of bedsit breakups.\nNME (08/12/2000)\n\n\nROLLING STONE REVIEW\nSongs From A Room, Cohen's second album, was for me a great improvement over his first because of restraint in the use of strings, clarions and angelic choirs, and because the compositions themselves were fairly even in quality (with "Bird on the Wire" and "Story of Issac" two really tight, clean stand-outs). And short--he shouldn't be straining the frail but frequently quite lovely melodies to five and six minutes, as he does on Songs of Love and Hate. But this record, alas, goes back to all the trash that cluttered up the first album--schlock horns, schlock strings, schlock chorus--as if to make of it a style. Recognizable, yes no one but Leonard Cohen could have come out with these arrangements but a style, no.\n\nThere are a couple of terrific songs on this one (Cohen is one of those artists who would benefit greatly by a "Best Of" album), though the record as a whole has not the charm that his first develops after a long while it is not as likable, because it is frequently downright depressing.\n\n"Famous Blue Raincoat." of the two, is the one that really improves with each hearing: it is about something, which gives the lyrics a spine the other songs on the record lack, what with images longer, more obscure and frequently tangled than before. "Famous Blue Raincoat" is the characteristic L. Cohen hymn to promiscuity ("Winter Lady," "Tonight Will Be Fine," among others): "And you treated my woman To a flake of your life. And when she came home/She was nobody's wife."\n\nIt is in this song that the female chorus is most harmful--it draws attention to the lyric, for one thing, which is at that point most inane: "And Jane came by with a lock of your hair/She said that you gave it to her ..." But the guitar here is restful, not the usual busy-signal that one finds on "Avalanche" here and "Songs of the Street," for instance, on The Songs of Leonard Cohen.\n\nThe other highlight is "Joan of Arc." That Cohen mostly sets music to verses (whether or not he writes the former first) is painfully clear when he recites, above his own singing voice in the distant background: "Myself I long for love and life But must it come so cruel and oh, so bright?" But there is the melody (nice), the chorus works reasonably well, and the lyrics sound perfectly fine when sung: "She said I'm tired of the war I want the kind of work I had before ..."\n\n"Avalanche," the first song on the first side, hears the famous Cohen mosquito-hum guitar, a distracting stutter. The image here is abjection, and I think (hedge) that it is about the temptations of pity ("It is your flesh I wear"). But it is pretended abjection, after all the weakness, a constant theme of Cohen's, is a pose: "The cripple that you clothe and feed Is neither starved nor cold." As on "Love Calls You By Your Name," later on the record: "Wondering when the bandage pulls away. Was I only limping? Was I really lame?"\n\n"Last Year's Man" and the cut that follows it, "Dress Rehearsal Rag," create the same mood (depressing) but "Last Year's Man" is more literary sometimes quite nicely, as in the refrain: "The skylight is like a skin/On a drum I'll never mend/And the rain falls down on last year's man." "Dress Rehearsal Rag" has what may be a very slight echo--whatever it is, it does wonders for Cohen's voice--and the chorus works well here within the relative simplicity of the Army, Cohen's band.\n\n"Diamonds In The Mine," the last song on the first side, indicates to me the essential stylelessness of the production, or perhaps the lack of stylistic integrity--though I was satisfied with "Bird on the Wire," an earlier excursion into country sound. His voice screams, yells, spits, is so ugly that you fumble for the reject button or try to concentrate on Bob Johnston's fine piano (he also produced). His spoken exhortations ("You tell 'em now," addressing the chorus; closing with "That's all I got to say") won't exactly make you want to shake your little body.\n\nOn the other side, "Love Calls You By Your Name," shifts persons (from second to first), does a lot of interesting things with prepositional constructions ("Between the snowman and the rain ... between the victim and his stain ...") and so on, and has a bunch of nice lines ("shouldering your loneliness like a gun you will not learn to aim"), and has direction but it just can't be carried for six minutes.\n\n"Sing Another Song, Boys," which appears to be a live recording of some sort, begins with a recitation (like "Joan of Are") of the last verse, which comes off a bit embarrassing. Both his gifts and his painful excesses are evident. "His hand on his leather belt Like it was the wheel of some ocean liner," does not, somehow, do it for me, and I'd be glad to sponsor a contest for an alternative to: "She tempts him with a clarinet She waves a Nazi dagger." But then: "They'll never reach the moon At least the one we're after ..." and "But let's leave these lovers wondering Why they cannot have each other." That's nice. (RS 90 -- Sep 2, 1971) -- ARIHUR SCHMIDT
This folk cd contains 9 tracks and runs 50min 41sec.
Freedb: 6d0bdf09

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