Even the production, laden with synthesized strings and cooing female choruses, is wry on I'm Your Man, a definitive Leonard Cohen album. Though still touched with the tragic ("Take This Waltz," based on a Garcia Lorca poe... more »m), the album often achieves its high points by combining Cohen's world-weariness with black-humored evocations of social and romantic ills and artistic quandaries. "I was born like this, I had no choice," the gravelly Cohen intimates at disc's end. "I was born with the gift of a golden voice." --Rickey Wright« less
Even the production, laden with synthesized strings and cooing female choruses, is wry on I'm Your Man, a definitive Leonard Cohen album. Though still touched with the tragic ("Take This Waltz," based on a Garcia Lorca poem), the album often achieves its high points by combining Cohen's world-weariness with black-humored evocations of social and romantic ills and artistic quandaries. "I was born like this, I had no choice," the gravelly Cohen intimates at disc's end. "I was born with the gift of a golden voice." --Rickey Wright
"This album is one of Cohen's greatest achievements both lyrically and musically. Featuring some of his best songs this great record only gets better with time and still holds the same if not more significance as it did when it was first released."
Populist Cohen
Richard Ely | Derbyshire, UK | 09/12/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"I've heard that this is Leonard Cohen's own favourite among his albums; this would seem to be proved by the fact that his self-selected 'Essential' compilation features all but two songs from here.
Maybe it's a case of gratitude? This was the album that brought him back out of the cold, giving him his highest charting album in many years and pushing his back catalogue onto the charts around the world. Many of the songs have become a latterday classics....but many older fans will baulk at the gleaming, synethised arrangements, some of which now sound very dated indeed.
Not to worry, though: simply programme them out in your head. There's too much fine songwriting here to pass this one over just because you don't like the production. The only possible mis-step on here is 'Jazz Police' - or maybe this is just a private joke, a bit like 'Diamonds In The Mine'?
Whatever you think, this is an essential acquisition if you're any kind of fan."
Someone I just found while listening at a friend's house!
Liza | El Paso TX | 09/12/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"You have to listen and see the DVD of the live concert in London...he is a great poet and has a great sound and backup musicians!"
Best Leonard Cohen album
William F. Jack | St. Paul, MN | 11/04/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This was perhaps his first album -- can't remember. But it is quintessential Leonard Cohen, uncensored or made "brighter" by him or by anyone else. Powerful lyrics, subjects, and voice."