Leonard Cohen: Songs of Love & Hate (with 12x12" lyric booklet) [COLUMBIA]

Why you'll love it

This remastered reissue comes with a full-size 12x12" lyric booklet, a fine thing to have for an album this rich in words. It reached No. 4 in the UK and No. 2 in the Netherlands, and Rolling Stone placed it at No. 295 on its 2012 list of the 500 greatest albums.

This edition

• 12x12" lyric booklet
• Remastered
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

Montreal's finest poet-turned-songwriter made his third album in Nashville, of all places, cutting most of it at Columbia's Studio A in September 1970 with producer Bob Johnston. The setting is country music central; the songs are something else entirely, eight long, candlelit pieces about love, faith and the cost of both.

"Avalanche" opens with Cohen's insistent, syncopated classical-style guitar. "Famous Blue Raincoat," written as a letter from one man to the man who had an affair with his wife, became one of his most covered songs, recorded later by Jennifer Warnes and Tori Amos. "Joan of Arc" is a dialogue between Joan and the fire, and "Sing Another Song, Boys" was captured live at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. Further work took place at Trident Studios in London.

Pitchfork gave it 8.2, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Ghost and Aimee Mann have all taken a run at "Avalanche." More than fifty years on it's still the record people reach for at four in the morning, which, as it happens, is exactly when it seems to have been written.

Also at Kops: more Leonard Cohen on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19439931851), a reissue of the 1971 album.