Them's Fightin' Words

You can very broadly divide the world into two distinct camps – those who love Leonard Cohen and those who think all his music is good for is slitting your wrists to.

It’s pretty funny when you stop to think about them, the wrist-slitting brigade.

You take an artist and you give him or her a blank canvas, be it a recording studio, a film set or literally a canvas, and they fill that creative space it with something real, visceral, beautiful and true.

They fill it with something that captures the tragedy and the majesty of the human spirit and communicates that so powerfully that people’s immediate reaction is run away screaming about how they’re going to slit their wrists.

“I have enough shit to deal with in my life without listening to that!” they invariably say. But I’ll tell you one thing that you can pretty much take to the bank – if they run from difficult emotions in the music they listen to, or the movies they watch, they’ll run from those same emotions in life as well.

Maybe I’m a mopey, sad, Mr Loserpants, but I like art that makes me think and in some cases, makes me sad. Is that weird? I dunno, I just find that sometimes there’s a certain comfort in being sad that the wrist-slitting brigade will never understand.

And when I’m in moods like that, my friend Mr Leonard Cohen comes around in his famous blue raincoat and we share a whisky together, sighing eternally.

Here’s the first single off the album that lands next week Tuesday, it’s called “Show Me The Place”.

Expect a full review soon as I get my mitts on that album, it’s called Old Ideas so keep an eye out.

Or slit your wrists now, your call

-ST