Album Review : Leonard Cohen - Popular Problems (2014)
Listen to Popular Problems here
Leonard Cohen didn’t have anything left to prove in 2014. Armed with a wildly successful catalogue of hits, he could’ve toured the world with them until he got bored and walked into the sunset. But that’s not how the creative mind works. That’s why Cohen was in the studio in 2014, recording a brand new album at 80 years of age. Unlike many projects recorded extremely late in a musician’s career, Popular Problems is a distillation of what he does best.
It’s classy, subdued and precise.
One of the problems that kept Leonard Cohen from becoming culturally dominant like Bob Dylan is that he never quite figured who he was musically. He dabbled with folk, country, lounge, worship music, techno, soul and a lot of other genres without ever settling on whichever complemented his crafty and unorthodox writing best. That’s one of the interesting aspects of Popular Problems. It is focused and spare. It lets his songwriting talent shine.
The synth has always been Cohen’s predilection weapon. It’s what he used to create his catchiest hits like Dance Me To The End Of Love or Tower of Song and he comes back to it on Nevermind, the most notorious song from Popular Problems. There’s a little bit of strings used, but barely. Cohen signs about war crimes and pyrrhic victories on a simple, but playful synth line. Some of you will remember, it was the theme song for season two of True Detective.
It’s also a great jam.
This record is supremely dark. Cohen was caught in a spiral of heartbreak and disbelief at the end of his life and it starts to show on Popular Problems. One of my favorite songs on it is Almost Like The Blues, which is this crushing ballad halfway between worship music and afternoon bar tunes about helplessly witnessing the horrors of the world and feeling vacant. It’s one of these great songs to get absurdly drunk to. Cohen has a couple of these.
Samson in New Orleans is one of the most interesting songs on Popular Problems, musically speaking. The spare organ and the solemnity of the performances would make it a fit in churches or crowded barrooms. A Street is the barest one. It’s good in the conventional way Leonard Cohen songs are good. It’s almost not a song. It’s a quiet walk into his mind. It’s uneventful, yet endearing in the weird way Cohen can be when he seems like he’s talking directly to you.
There are also country songs on Popular Problems, which is weird. But there’s always an odd surprise like that on Leonard Cohen records. Did I Ever Love You? and You Got Me Singing are not straight country, but they have that old school 1950’s twang influence. I suspect Cohen took great pleasure being in the studio with his team of long-time collaborators and that he didn’t care how some of these songs would be received. I’m cool with that.
These songs ARE weird mood breakers, but I’m cool with it.
Popular Problems is another strong late Leonard Cohen record. It’s not quite up there with Old Ideas and You Want It Darker, but it almost is. He really was becoming that old man full of wisdom and beauty that we wanted him to be all along. It came at the cost of terrible heartbreak and resignation for him, but it’s where it happened. He became the pope of helpless middle-aged intellectual men, like me. I’m not sure whether it was a good thing or not anymore.
7.8/10
