Sounds for Stylish Men: R.I.P. Leonard Cohen

November has been the most futile month in 2016.  With a looming Trump presidency, more than half of America is rightly panicking, holding their breath or taking to the streets in protest.  Adding injury to insult, accomplished songsmith Leonard Cohen died yesterday at age 82.  In a year where we’ve already lost Prince and David Bowie, Cohen’s death is almost too much to take.

I discovered Cohen's music in high school.  His pensive, intellectual introspection appealed to my angst in a way emo music never could and helped me process life’s pains and exult in its joys.  Cohen’s pain was covered in a veneer of lyrical beauty.  While it didn’t paint the portrait of the artist of a tortured genius, it plumbed the depths of the human psyche in a strange acceptance of adversity and suffering.  Through this pain, Cohen could also find happy moments, or at the very least a reconciliation of futility that in his world seemed like ebullience.  

Leonard Cohen in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1972 (Photo courtesy of Aquarium Drunkard).

Not only could Cohen turn out a tune like few others, he dressed with a solemn grace and dignity that transcended trends.  His style improved as he aged, making the shift from chunky sweaters, work shirts and heavy coats in his younger years to full suits and crisp fedoras by the time he hit 80.  Cohen looked appropriate in black and gray get-ups, symbolic gestures representing his constant state of melancholic retrospection, a way of paying his dues and tributes without grieving.  If I can ever wear a hat with one-eighth the finesse and attitude that Cohen did, I’ll be a lucky man.

Here are five of my favorite Cohen tunes, songs both dark and light, songs of love and hate, of loss and discovery.  They might also double as a perfect coping mechanism for the trying times we’re facing right now and provide a few cracks so that the light can get in.

“Who By Fire” (With Sonny Rollins): My dad took me to see Sonny Rollins when I was 13, and that concert led me to pursue a calling as a jazz musician.  While the jazz path didn’t pan out, Rollins’ lyrical improvisation remains near to my heart this day.  He adds his staggered and staccatoed riffs to Cohen’s dirgelike “Who By Fire.”  The sweeping, soulful live rendition of the tune from 1989 complete with R&B flecked background vocals is an underrated triumph in Cohen’s catalog, if there ever was one.

“Famous Blue Raincoat”: “Hallelujah” - the Cohen original made famous by the late Jeff Buckley in 1994 - was Cohen’s most well known song but “Famous Blue Raincoat,”  off his 1971 album Songs of Love and Hate, encapsulates his songwriting tendencies better than anything else from his canon.  It’s easy to imagine Cohen hunkering over his desk on a cloudy afternoon penning the tune, and the image of the protagonist’s “famous blue raincoat” is easy enough to conjure up without a physical representation of it ever existing.  “Famous Blue Raincoat’s” masterful imagery cemented Cohen’s songwriting credentials, putting him on par with other reluctant poet laureates like Bob Dylan.

“Almost Like the Blues” and “You Want It Darker”: The track that set the precedent for 2016’s album You Want It Darker was 2014’s “Almost Like The Blues.”  Listen to the latter and the album’s title track next to each other, and they become companions that show Cohen reflecting on his advanced age with a strange saturnine acceptance and melancholy grace.  These tunes featured Cohen where he lived - the present.  Cohen wasn’t a magical thinker or nostalgic for past time, and the here-and-nowness of his work paint the portrait of a man ready for whatever is coming at him.  These songs also feature lyrics and metaphors more simplistic than in Cohen's earlier oeuvre, yet are poignant and powerful because they're layered with his deep, raspy voice and complex delivery.

Classic Cohen (Photo courtesy of the New Yorker).

“Anthem” : Even in his most downtrodden tunes, Cohen’s poetic lyrics offered glimmers of hope.  Nowhere is this clearer than the legendary parable from his 1992 tune “Anthem,” where Cohen declares “There is a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in.”  Much like the darker preceding tracks, “Anthem” is more pertinent now than when it debuted and is a reminder than even in the most trying of times, there is reason for hope and that how we respond now matters more than an undetermined future.  

What Cohen used his now for was relentless creation.  At his best and worst, he put his pen to the paper and wrote songs that resonated with the hurt and triumph of millions.  Rest in peace, Leonard.  We’ll raise our glasses and tip our hats to you.