Various Positions

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Don’t get me wrong: Leonard Cohen’s standards were insanely high and Various Positions lives up to them in spurts. It’s just not consistently great like we remember it to be. One interesting detail on Various Position is that Leonard Cohen revisits the old country influences he experienced with on Songs From A Room. The luscious pedal steel guitar on Hunter’s Lullaby give it an almost Johnny Cash-like quality that stands out on the record. The Captain is more of a traditional Western song that could be heard in Texas dance halls, with its really iconoclast mix of piano and violin. It sounds out of place in such a different, modern sounding album (Casio keyboards were the shit in 1984) but it ties up nicely with Cohen’s past influences.

Unlike 'I'm Your Man' this biography is a little more revealing of Cohen, and less flattering (especially during the early years). This is a good thing, though, because we finally see that the guy was human. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992. St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p.68. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. Another alteration that Lissauer noticed was the remarkable change in Cohen's singing, with his voice having dropped about a minor third. Cohen later remarked to author Paul Zollo in the book Songwriters on Songwriting: Although it featured a more contemporary sound for its time compared with the singer's previous LPs, Columbia did not think it was commercially viable and refused to release Various Positions in the US. Walter Yetnikoff, president of the company, called him to his office in New York City and said, "Look, Leonard; we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good." [1]Offiziellecharts.de – Leonard Cohen – Various Positions" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 24 November 2016. Also (and this has nothing to do with Nadel's book, it's just a detail on Cohen himself): I was a bit disappointed to see how inconsistent and childish Cohen actually was in many episodes. Nadel implicitly states something similar on several occasions in his book (and that's another plus - because he showed Cohen as naked as Cohen himself would have wanted, for his obsession with nakedness and the truth without embellishing is a well-known fact). The second immortal song on Various Positions is perhaps Leonard Cohen’s best know song Hallelujah. The reasons why it became so big are more sophisticated. First, it’s a song about seeing and understanding the sacred in everyday life. Notably in sex. It’s full of psychosexual imagery and thankfulness to the lord, two things people really relate to. It’s also one of the best songwriting efforts of his career, which he awesomely brags about in the first verse. It has benevolent, lulling quality to it, before ramping into the killer chorus. It’s mechanically and emotionally great.

Nobody is going to make the mistake in calling Various Positions Leonard Cohen's best album, but there is enough on here to recommend to the casual Lenny fan, despite some shaky production work. Meanwhile, "Dance Me to the End of Love" has the same problem. The haunting, melancholy melody is phenomenal, but the Big '80s production he gives it just doesn't suit him very well. I'm a lot more open to '80s production values than I used to be, but the problem is that, as Death of a Ladies' Man rather painfully proved, Cohen and huge production are two things that simply don't play well together. It's not as needlessly bombastic as "Hallelujah," but I've heard several covers of this song that are essentially stripped bare, and I like them a lot more than this original. The use of synthesisers and Cohen's "new voice" would mark the beginning of a new era in Cohen's composing style and sound. Leonard Cohen is extraordinary at speaking words. He’s no doubt a great writer. But there are better songwriters. As a musician, he’s basically a tinkerer. As a singer, he’s as compelling as he is limited. But as a speaker of words, there may not have ever been anyone better. Just consider what a skill that is -- to be able to conjure the perfect words and then be able to release them in a manner that sounds even better than the poetry itself. This book reads very much like a research paper - filled with detailed analysis of his works, but totally devoid of any feeling. It's not like Nadel ignores the emotional angst of his work; after all that is what Cohen is all about. However, her treatment of his work is clinical, detached, almost aloof in discussing the psychic pain that imbues so much of his output.I was happy that the song was being used. Of course, there was certain ironic and amusing sidebars because the record that it came from, which was called Various Positions, that record Sony wouldn't put out. They didn't think it was good enough ... So there was a mild sense of revenge that arose in my heart. I was happy about it but it's ... I was just reading a review of a movie called Watchmen that uses it, and the reviewer said, "Can we please have a moratorium on 'Hallelujah' in movies and television shows?" And I kind of feel the same way ... I think the song came out in '83 or '84, and the only person who seemed to recognize the song was Dylan. He was doing it in concert. Nobody else recognized the song till quite a long time later, I think. Pennanen, Timo (2021). "Leonard Cohen". Sisältää hitin - 2. laitos Levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla 1.1.1960–30.6.2021 (PDF) (in Finnish). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. p.50. The "Hunter's Lullaby" is another example. A sad tale of a runaway father, could easily sound maudlin in the hands of other artists, but Cohen can keep the emotional intensity without resorting to cliche heart-tugging. Instead, of making the father out to be a negligent ogre, he writes of a man whose soul has to be on the move. Ironic that one of Cohen's least interesting albums should contain two of his most famous songs: "Dance Me to the End of Love" and "Hallelujah." The secret of Leonard Cohen’s longevity in the music industry lies in several factors. Notably tremendous songwriting and heartfelt live performances, but the abnormally long hiatus between records is part of the equation also. It allowed Cohen to smoothly evolve with the times and let creativity dictate his output instead of commercial imperatives. His transformation into the effortless swagster we remember today truly began on Various Positions in 1984. It’s where he abandoned the Dylan-like guitar-and-voice minimalism and came into his own as a recording artist.