Review Summary: Concerning Leonards, a window of opportunity or ends of line...
Depending on lap or story, acoustic roots or keys of '80s adaptation, but mostly on trademark plus briefly oriental female harmonizers, you conclude that whatever the Leonards might have planned pre-production, they both knew that in the end they would embrace the formulaic: complementing the delivery of the verses or stanzas.
Nonetheless, his delivery carries a capacity one needs to focus on, in order to grasp the whole and not just a name or formulas. Accordingly, in Popular Problems you can tell Cohen even if this record was spinning in the living room and you were a bit distant, as let's say - doing the dishes on a Sunday evening; but if so you would actually experience the faux-polish of popping poetry fragments as a post-breakup remedy, while feeding your pet or answering the phone.
Focus and Cohen will trigger neurons on both hemispheres. However, in that instance he can also evoke the more instinctual "uneasy" within the listener. For although a surface of macro 9/11s or Katrinas might reference overdone in 2015, subjective intuition will come in place as Leonard, once again, remains tastefully ambiguous under the layers when orating: submersibles for our micro poetry - or popular (everyday conflict and destruction concerning all) problems - to breathe in. Still, the uneasiness - now defined - after the realisation that back when he was 50ish, his voice was full of the sarcastic know-how of infinite ahead, while today even if he convincingly introduces to all those in a safe distance that he is in no hurries, he can't trick me into ignoring the debriefing stance he takes at times. Nevermind... for all the nuances of his deepened timbre are still there, to be pictured by those listening wholeheartedly.
As such, I won't necessarily argue with those done washing as the last track mellows, chatting, "I'm sorry to hear about your breakup... btw I just listened to the new Cohen... was ok, especially considering his age." I will however turn sullen if on the other end of the line someone a hint more polished, after gazing at the back page of "Punchlines for dummies", which is part of the grand scheme of objects lying on the floor or a turnaround in last night's polemics, would quote a Longfellow fragment such as "Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age."
Thank god for the window left open and the sparing "OLD AGE - OLD AGE - F*CK YOU! YOU GOT ME SINGING THE HALLELOYAH SONG - I AM OUTTA HERE!" by Leo, the African Grey in his uncommon 8th decade, as he sums behind him a disastrous popular weekend blessedly earning his last(?) victory lap.
