Back in 2005 Leonard Cohen discovered his business manager had embezzled his retirement fund, in 2008 he put back on his spurs and went back to filling the coffers with a world tour, in 2012 he released one of the best albums of that year and in 2014 at the age of 80, Cohen released my third favorite album of 2014 Popular Problems.
So, from the seeds of a truly devastating setback which ended his retirement at the age of 75, Cohen is now one of two (Dylan) maybe three (Bennett –though I didn’t like the Gaga album) , still capable of producing world class albums and he wouldn’t have known it if it wasn’t for his business manager.
The thing four of my top five albums has in common is uncommonly great songwriting –FKA twigs is more a question of mood and feel, is a surfeit of great songs. Popular Problems is a ridiculously great album, opening with “Slow”, a clever take on the race being to the slowest and continuing with the axiomatic “Almost Like The Blues”, you wait for a slackening of the rumbling pulse and it doesn’t happen. The following eight songs are quite the equal and “Did I Ever Love You” and “You Got Me singing” belong to the pantheon, though they might not make it.
At the time I wrote (here) “How good is Popular Problems? The first track “Slow” is better than the second track “Almost Like The Blues” and the second track is one of the best of the year. How great is it? It makes almost being 80 years old as cool as humanly possible. How great is it? untethered by as little as one bad song, it is as consistent as the new Justin Townes earle only deeper. How great is it? It is so great I think it may well be the album of the year. It is so great it is the greatness that you find in later period Nabakov, like “Transparent Things” -and it is the ululating completeness of something like a mid-period Nabakov like “The Vane Sisters”. I guess I mean it is eastern European in nature.”
I see no reason to change my mind.
