Leonard Cohen – Various Positions (1984/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 35:32 minutes | 382 MB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Various Positions is the seventh studio album by Leonard Cohen, released in December 1984 (and February 1985). It marked not only his turn to the modern sound and use of synthesizers (particularly on the opening track), but also, after his work on harmonies and backing vocals on the previous Recent Songs (1979), an even greater contribution from Jennifer Warnes, who is credited equally to Cohen as vocalist on all of the tracks.

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Leonard Cohen – The Future (1992/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 59:41 minutes | 651 MB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

As with most every Leonard Cohen album, a new record means a new means of musical exploration. With The Future, Cohen adds chiming synthesizers and eerie orchestrations to his brooding anthems about life’s darker half. One of the last of Cohen’s full-length albums, The Future is definitely one of the most direct. More notable tracks include “The Future” and “Waiting for the Miracle,” both of which were featured on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. Closer to spoken word poetry set to music than simply songs, the entire album is one long manifesto calling all to challenge the concepts of righteousness and despair in our modern world. Regardless of the music behind the man, Cohen still manages to bring to The Future what he brought to his earlier recordings: one man against the world with nothing but a gruff voice and a cause. –Christopher Fielder

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Leonard Cohen – Thanks for the Dance (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 29:21 minutes | 278 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

From beyond the grave, Leonard Cohen has returned with Thanks for the Dance, three years after the amazing record You Want It Darker. His previous album contained fiercely determined lyrics (“I’m ready my Lord”) and that dark deep voice that makes your hairs stand on end, all layered over choir and organ melodies. Cohen died in the night nineteen days later, on November 7th 2016. But the singer already had plans for the afterlife: a posthumous album. He entrusted the task to his son Adam, who had been involved with the production of what everyone thought was the master’s final work. Adam commented: “I know my father’s sound very well and we had already discussed the arrangements during the recording sessions for You Want It Darker.”

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Leonard Cohen – Ten New Songs (2001/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 52:46 minutes | 577 MB | Genre: Pop Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Ten New Songs (2001) was co-written and produced by Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson, and was Cohen’s first album recorded after he had spent a several years (starting in 1994) at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center in Southern California. The album was the first Cohen album that was recorded and produced digitally.

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Leonard Cohen – Songs of Love and Hate (1971/1995)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:02 minutes | 469 MB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

Songs of Love and Hate is one of Leonard Cohen’s most emotionally intense albums — which, given the nature of Cohen’s body of work, is no small statement. While the title Songs of Love and Hate sums up the album’s themes accurately enough, it’s hardly as simple as that description might lead you to expect — in these eight songs, “love” encompasses the physical (“Last Year’s Man”), the emotional (“Famous Blue Raincoat”), and the spiritual (“Joan of Arc”), and the contempt in songs like “Dress Rehearsal Rag” and “Avalanche” is the sort of venom that can only come from someone who once cared very deeply. The sound of the album is clean and uncluttered, and for the most part the music stays out of the way of the lyrics, which dominate the songs. Thankfully, Cohen had grown noticeably as a singer since his first two albums, and if he hardly boasts a range to rival Roy Orbison here, he is able to bring out the subtleties of “Joan of Arc” and “Famous Blue Raincoat” in a way his previous work would not have led you to expect. And while Bob Johnston’s production is spare, it’s spare with a purpose, letting Cohen’s voice and guitar tell their stories and using other musicians for intelligent, emotionally resonant punctuation (Paul Buckmaster’s unobtrusive string arrangements and the use of a children’s chorus are especially inspired). And Songs of Love and Hate captured Cohen in one of his finest hours as a songwriter, and the best selections (especially “Famous Blue Raincoat,” “Joan of Arc,” and “Love Calls You by Your Name”) rank with the most satisfying work of his career. If Songs of Love and Hate isn’t Cohen’s best album, it comes close enough to be essential to anyone interested in his work. –Mark Deming

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Leonard Cohen – Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 41:35 minutes | 435 MB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

At a time when a growing number of pop songwriters were embracing a more explicitly poetic approach in their lyrics, the 1967 debut album from Leonard Cohen introduced a songwriter who, rather than being inspired by “serious” literature, took up music after establishing himself as a published author and poet. The ten songs on Songs of Leonard Cohen were certainly beautifully constructed, artful in a way few (if any) other lyricists would approach for some time, but what’s most striking about these songs isn’t Cohen’s technique, superb as it is, so much as his portraits of a world dominated by love and lust, rage and need, compassion and betrayal. While the relationship between men and women was often the framework for Cohen’s songs (he didn’t earn the nickname “the master of erotic despair” for nothing), he didn’t write about love; rather, Cohen used the never-ending thrust and parry between the sexes as a jumping off point for his obsessive investigation of humanity’s occasional kindness and frequent atrocities (both emotional and physical). Cohen’s world view would be heady stuff at nearly any time and place, but coming in a year when pop music was only just beginning to be taken seriously, Songs of Leonard Cohen was a truly audacious achievement, as bold a challenge to pop music conventions as the other great debut of the year, The Velvet Underground & Nico, and a nearly perfectly realized product of his creative imagination. Producer John Simon added a touch of polish to Cohen’s songs with his arrangements (originally Cohen wanted no accompaniment other than his guitar), though the results don’t detract from his dry but emotive vocals; instead, they complement his lyrics with a thoughtful beauty and give the songs even greater strength. And a number of Cohen’s finest songs appeared here, including the luminous “Suzanne,” the subtly venomous “Master Song” and “Sisters of Mercy,” which would later be used to memorable effect in Robert Altman’s film McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Many artists work their whole career to create a work as singular and accomplished as Songs of Leonard Cohen, and Cohen worked this alchemy the first time he entered a recording studio; few musicians have ever created a more remarkable or enduring debut. –Mark Deming

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