Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker (2016) [24bit FLAC]

  Genres: Folk, Rock
  Style: Singer/Songwriter
  Source: HDtracks
  Codec: FLAC
  Bit rate: ~ 1,400 kbps
  Bit depth: 24
  Sample rate: 44.1 kHz

  01 You Want It Darker 
  02 Treaty 
  03 On the Level 
  04 Leaving the Table 
  05 If I Didn't Have Your Love 
  06 Traveling Light 
  07 It Seemed the Better Way 
  08 Steer Your Way 
  09 String Reprise / Treaty

  Given the subject matter in its title track, Leonard Cohen's advanced age (82), it's tempting to hear You Want It Darker as a last album. In advance of its release, he even told The New Yorker that he was ready to die, only to walk the comment back later. Whether it is or isn't, You Want It Darker is a hell of a record. Cohen wrote these songs alone and with old friends Sharon Robinson and Patrick Leonard. Son Adam produced, stepping in while his father was suffering from a severe back injury that required him to sing from a medically designed chair.

  Cohen's sepulchral voice expresses a wealth of emotion through its grainy rasp. He remains defiant even while acknowledging failures, regrets, brokenness, and even anger. Redemption arrives, if at all, through unflinching honesty. The title track single is introduced by a choir and a foreboding bassline. Its lyric is as much an indictment of religion as a reflection, personal confession, and doubt. Cantor Gideon Y. Zelermyer engages with the sacred even as Cohen wrestles with it. For every, "Himeni, Himeni/I'm ready my Lord…" there is a counter: "...Magnified and sanctified/Be thy Holy Name/Vilified and crucified/In the human frame/A million candles burning/For the help that never came…." In the final verse he asserts: "If you are the dealer/I want out of this game," but he's answered by Zelermyer's and the choir's resolute devotion