Track Listing

1. Is This What You Wanted
2. Chelsea Hotel No. 2
3. Lover, Lover, Lover
4. Field Commander Cohen
5. Why Don't You Try
6. There Is a War
7. Singer Must Die
8. I Tried to Leave You
9. Who by Fire
10. Take This Longing
11. Leaving Greensleeves

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2965 in Music
• Released on: 2008-03-01
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
By the time Leonard Cohen began his recording career in 1967, the iconoclastic Canadian troubadour was already well established as a poet and author. He quickly emerged as one of the era's most original and influential singer-songwriters, building a large and legendary body of work that continues to inspire artists and listeners alike.

Much of Cohen's reputation and mystique was established by his early work for Columbia Records, particularly the five albums he recorded between 1967 and 1974. Now, these five classic albums, unavailable on vinyl for two decades, have been lovingly restored to their original LP format.

For their new Sundazed editions, all five albums have been meticulously remastered and have been sourced from the original Columbia Records stereo masters in order to preserve the sound of the original albums. In keeping with the exacting standards for which Sundazed has become known, each album will be pressed on high-definition vinyl, with complete original cover art.

1974's New Skin for the Old Ceremony saw Cohen taking a turn away from the spare sound of his earlier releases, with such numbers as "Chelsea Hotel #2," "There Is a War" and "A Singer Must Die" featuring expanded instrumental arrangements and some of the most expressive vocal performances of Cohen's career.

Customer Reviews

Poetry in motion
New Skin For The Old Ceremony is a masterpiece, and one of Leonard Cohen's best albums. It's a truly great effort, and too often overlooked. Although his first three albums - particularly the first and third - are all certified masterpieces, this one, his fourth, was his first attempt to move beyond them in scope. Incorporating background vocalists and a wider array of instrumentation than he employed on those sparse first three efforts, Cohen creates here an album broader, more epic in scope than its predecessors. He also began, for the first time, to lighten up on the subject matter of his lyrics: incorporating some - albeit rather dark - humor into several of the songs here, Cohen creates an album - which, along with its broader musical pallette - that is a much easier listen this his first three, which were at times so depressing as to lend themselves to the status of "mood" albums. That said, Cohen is Cohen, and his themes remain the same; he has a lighter touch here at times, is all. Although the opening track, Is This What You Wanted?, features lyrics like "You were K.Y. Jelly/I was Vaseline" much of the rest of the album is pervaded with a deep and dark sense of self-loathing: Cohen places himself on a pedastal and de-construcs his persona as he did on "Avalanche", but in a much less abstract, far more direct and disturbing way. Cohen at this time was going through a period of extreme personal depression and writer's block (which would culminate in the Phil Spector collaboration on Death of A Ladies' Man), and songs such as Field Commander Cohen and A Singer Must Die attest to his state of mind at the time. A deep, dark, driving masterpiece with just the right amount of light touch, New Skin For The Old Ceremony is a great album, and an essential purchase for any admirer of Leonard Cohen.

A step up for Cohen
"You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen/You were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline/You were the father of modern medicine, I was Mr. Clean/You where the (...) and the beast of Babylon, I was Rin Tin Tin," Leonard Cohen sings on "Is This What You Wanted," a song that displays the much-needed dose of humor added to his lyrical exercises in regret and self-depreciation on his fourth album, 1974's New Skin for the Old Ceremony. New Skin's more varied instrumentation, looser vocal approach and added wit make it Cohen's best album yet. Although he was always a finely skilled and richly tender poet, one could only endure so much of Cohen's earlier albums as spirit-stomping and disheartened as they were. Although the main subject matter of New Skin is still grief, Cohen confronts life's tragedies with a different approach. He abandons the mournful wailing of songs like "Bird on a Wire" or "Stories of the Street" and the somber expressions of "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" or "The Stranger Song" and dons a type of charisma, classified somewhere between crooner and beatnik, and stands in a mock-confrontational pose, challenging both the complicated nature of society ("A Singer Must Die," "Field Commander Cohen," "There is a War") and distressing predicaments with another cast of abusive, self-destructive, yet intoxicating women ("I Tried to Leave You," "Chelsea Hotel #2," "Leaving Green Sleeves") with a fistful of clever irony and satire. Cohen's tongue being placed in his cheek does not, however, equal the complete loss of the intimate, folk rock beauty of his music. "Who by the Fire" is as striking, moving and poignant any song the man has written and "Take This Longing" is one of his most ardent, elegantly expressed requests. Generally, the album keeps the solemn and dignified air of Cohen's previous works. Its added whimsical flair only makes his music more entertaining and invigorating.

It makes you dance while crying
Full of detached intimacy, this album is superior for Cohen or any other artist. Blending his poetry with offbeat, almost tribal-sounding instruments brings out the primitive feelings of lost affairs, love, and even the sounds of war. Simply beautiful.