Dear Heather | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | October 26, 2004 | |||
Recorded | 1979, July 9, 1985, 2002–04 | |||
Genre | Soft rock, contemporary folk | |||
Length | 49:27 | |||
Label | Columbia | |||
Producer | Leanne Ungar, Sharon Robinson, Anjani Thomas, Henry Lewy | |||
Leonard Cohen chronology | ||||
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Dear Heather is the 11th studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, released by Columbia Records in 2004. It was dedicated "in memory of Jack McClelland 1922-2004."
The album features Cohen experimenting with different musical approaches. On "To a Teacher", Cohen quotes himself from The Spice-Box of Earth , his second collection of poetry from 1961. The basic tracks of "The Faith" dated back to the Recent Songs sessions from 1979. [1] The album includes a live version of the country standard "Tennessee Waltz", which was taken from a performance during his tour in support of the LP Various Positions . Considering the plethora of sources from which the material sprang, Cohen had originally wanted to call the album Old Ideas, but eventually changed it to Dear Heather for fear that fans might assume it was merely a compilation or "best of" package ( Old Ideas would be the title of Cohen's next studio album). There is increase in spoken poetry over singing, with two songs featuring words by other writers: Lord Byron ("No More a-Roving") and F. R. Scott ("Villanelle for our Time"). [2] The gospel-tinged "On That Day" addresses the still-raw tragedy and horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Aggregate scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
Metacritic | 74/100 [3] |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [4] |
Blender | [5] |
Entertainment Weekly | B− [6] |
The Guardian | [7] |
Mojo | [8] |
NME | 7/10 [9] |
Pitchfork | 8.0/10 [10] |
Rolling Stone | [11] |
Uncut | [12] |
The Village Voice | B [13] |
The album reached #131 on the Billboard 200 and Internet Album charts and #5 on the Canadian Album charts. It was Cohen's highest charting album in America since 1969's Songs from a Room . The album's highest chart position came in Poland where it reached #1 on the Polish Albums Chart. [14] Dear Heather was not received as well by critics as Ten New Songs and Cohen's 2001 live album Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 had been. Some critics found it dour - although such notices had been commonplace throughout various stages of Cohen's career - and noted a tone of finality in the offering. The New York Times reported, "Some of the songs are virtually unadorned with poetic imagery and fall flat; in others, Mr. Cohen uses his calmly sepulchral voice for speech rather than melody. The production is homemade." The Stylus deemed it an "unsatisfying way to end such an intriguing career." In the November 2004 Rolling Stone review of the LP, Michaelangelo Matos praised the album, calling Cohen "Canada's hippest 70 year old" and insisting that "given how monochromatic Cohen tends to be, the jumbled feel works in Dear Heather's favor." Thom Jurek of AllMusic argues that Dear Heather is Cohen's "most upbeat" album: "Rather than focus on loss as an end, it looks upon experience as something to be accepted as a portal to wisdom and gratitude...If this is indeed his final offering as a songwriter, it is a fine, decent, and moving way to close this chapter of the book of his life."
All tracks are written by Leonard Cohen, except where noted.
No. | Title | Lyrics | Music | Producer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Go No More a-Roving" | Lord Byron | Sharon Robinson | 3:40 | |
2. | "Because Of" | Leanne Ungar | 3:00 | ||
3. | "The Letters" | Cohen, Robinson | Robinson | 4:44 | |
4. | "Undertow" | Ungar | 4:20 | ||
5. | "Morning Glory" | Ungar | 4:20 | ||
6. | "On That Day" | Cohen, Anjani Thomas | Thomas | 2:04 | |
7. | "Villanelle for Our Time" | F. R. Scott | Ungar | 5:55 | |
8. | "There for You" | Cohen, Robinson | Robinson | 4:36 | |
9. | "Dear Heather" | Ungar | 3:41 | ||
10. | "Nightingale" | Cohen, Thomas | Thomas, Ed Sanders | 2:27 | |
11. | "To a Teacher" | Ungar | 2:32 | ||
12. | "The Faith" | based on "Un Canadien errant" | Ungar, Henry Lewy | 4:17 | |
13. | "Tennessee Waltz" (Live at Montreux Jazz Festival) | Redd Stewart; additional verse: Cohen | Pee Wee King | Cohen | 4:05 |
Total length: | 49:27 |
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
|
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
Denmark (IFPI Danmark) [34] | Gold | 20,000^ |
Norway (IFPI Norway) [35] | Gold | 20,000* |
Poland (ZPAV) [36] | Gold | 20,000* |
United Kingdom (BPI) [37] | Silver | 60,000^ |
* Sales figures based on certification alone. |
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Leonard Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter and poet who was active in music from 1967 until his death in 2016. Cohen released 14 studio albums and eight live albums during the course of a recording career lasting almost 50 years, throughout which he remained an active poet. His entire catalogue is available on Columbia Records. His 1967 debut Songs of Leonard Cohen earned an RIAA gold record; he followed up with three more highly acclaimed albums: Songs from a Room (1969), Songs of Love and Hate (1971) and New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974), before allowing Phil Spector to produce Death of a Ladies' Man for Warner Bros. Records in 1977. Cohen returned to Columbia in 1979 for Recent Songs, but the label declined to release his next album, Various Positions (1984) in the US, leaving it to American shops to import it from CBS Canada. In 1988, Columbia got behind Cohen again and gave full support to I'm Your Man, which brought his career to new heights, and Cohen followed it with 1992's The Future. Cohen then took a nine-year hiatus, and returned with Ten New Songs in 2001, which he made with Sharon Robinson, following this with Dear Heather (2004). In 2008 Cohen began touring for the first time in 15 years and, as well as the release of several live albums, he released Old Ideas (2012), which peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 albums chart. This was the highest ranking ever for a Leonard Cohen album, and it became his first to top the Canadian Albums Chart, a feat he repeated with his follow-up, Popular Problems, released in 2014. Cohen released his final studio album, You Want It Darker, in October 2016, only 19 days prior to his death. A posthumous album titled Thanks for the Dance was released on November 22, 2019. His live albums included Live Songs (1973), Cohen Live: Leonard Cohen in Concert (1994), Live in London (2009), Songs from the Road (2010), from his 2008–2009 world tour, and Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 (2009).
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