My reaction to an album like this is always two-fold. First, there is righteous indignation: how could they? Then, however, comes the point where you realise how fortunate you are: to get this spare ticket, to be taken for another ride that was not even supposed to happen.
Thanks For The Dance was pieced together and produced by Cohen's son, Adam, and you can imagine the reverence towards the material left behind by the late poet. The familiar elements are all in place, of course, from subtle orchestration to female vocals to the Spanish lute, but you do feel that the special care was given not to allow these elements to overshadow the poetry and the voice. Which is timeless poetry and which is very much the same voice that could be heard on Leonard Cohen's last album: gruff, soothing and strangely unfading.
Perhaps the greatest miracle of all is that almost none of these nine songs ended up like overworked sketches. Some are no more than brief poems (like "The Goal") set to piano and sombre atmosphere, but even those sound complete. As for the immortal Cohen classics, they include the opening "Happens To The Heart" (as good a song as he had ever written), the astonishing "It's Torn" and the sheer drama of "Puppets" which first appeared on that long-forgotten Philip Glass collaboration from 2007.
At twenty-nine brief minutes, Thanks For The Dance does not feel like Leonard Cohen's final album. But it is what it is: a postscriptum, a cocktail in a bar following a big party. And you love the bar and you love the cocktail and you are desperately trying to hang on to the taste.
RECOMMENDED THIS MONTH:
No Treasure But Hope by Tindersticks
Kiwanuka by Michael Kiwanuka
From Out Of Nowhere by Jeff Lynne's ELO
Undivided Five by A Winged Victory for the Sullen
Thanks For The Dance by Leonard Cohen
