Review
Leonard Cohen's 'New Skin For The Old Ceremony' is a musical tapestry woven with threads of transformation and rebirth. Like the phoenix rising from its own ashes, Cohen emerges with a sound that's both familiar and startlingly new. The album's rich instrumentation - violas dancing with mandolins, banjos harmonizing with guitars - creates a sonic landscape as diverse and complex as the human experience itself.
In songs like 'Is This What You Wanted' and 'Field Commander Cohen', we hear echoes of ancient melodies intertwined with modern poetry. It's as if Cohen has unearthed musical artifacts from a forgotten civilization and breathed new life into them. The album's themes of transformation and the union of opposites resonate like age-old myths, retold for our time. 'There Is a War' speaks of eternal conflicts - rich against poor, man against woman - reminding us that these battles have raged since time immemorial.
The controversy surrounding the album's original cover art, drawn from an alchemical text, only adds to its mystique. It's as if Cohen is inviting us to partake in a sacred ritual, to shed our old skins and emerge anew. In 'Chelsea Hotel #2', he offers a bittersweet elegy to a fleeting love, his words as carefully crafted as an ancient bard's. This album isn't just music - it's a modern-day myth, inviting us to lose ourselves in its depths and emerge transformed. - Elara
