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Recent Songs | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | September 27, 1979 | |||
Recorded | April – May 1979 | |||
Studio | A&M (Hollywood) | |||
Genre | Contemporary folk | |||
Length | 52:55 | |||
Label | Columbia | |||
Producer | Leonard Cohen, Henry Lewy | |||
Leonard Cohen chronology | ||||
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Recent Songs is the sixth studio album by Leonard Cohen, released in 1979. Produced by Cohen alongside Henry Lewy, it was a return to his normal acoustic folk music sound after the Phil Spector-driven experimentation of Death of a Ladies' Man , but now with many jazz and Oriental influences.
After recording Death of a Ladies' Man with Phil Spector, a chaotically recorded album that would garner Cohen the worst reviews of his career, the singer decided to produce his next album himself with assistance from Henry Lewy, who had previously worked regularly with Joni Mitchell. The album included Gypsy violin player Raffi Hakopian, English string arranger Jeremy Lubbock, Armenian oud player (located in Los Angeles) John Bilezikjian and even a Mexican Mariachi band. Long-time Cohen collaborator Jennifer Warnes appeared prominently in vocal tracks. Members of the band Passenger, whom Cohen also met through Mitchell, played on four of the songs. Garth Hudson of the Band also appeared on the album.
Unlike the psychodrama evident on the Spector-dominated Death of a Ladies' Man, Recent Songs, which was recorded at A&M Studios in Hollywood in the spring of 1979, sounds lucid by comparison. In the book Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life, oud player John Bilezikjian recalls to author Anthony Reynolds: "Sessions started in the afternoon and we'd go into the evenings. No drinking, that I saw, no visitors. Finished at a reasonable time, no early hours stuff...He let me do whatever it was I wanted to do. He trusted my sense of musicality. He would be with a microphone and headphones and we'd all be wired up in our separate booths and we'd listen and add our part." The album had a largely acoustic, Eastern-tinged flavor and was augmented by the singing of Jennifer Warnes and newcomer Sharon Robinson, who would go on to become one of Cohen's favorite musical collaborators.
"Came So Far For Beauty" originated from Cohen's collaboration with New Skin for the Old Ceremony producer John Lissauer for a project called Songs For Rebecca, which was scrapped (Lissauer received co-writing credit). In the liner notes to the album, Cohen thanks his Zen Master Roshi for inspiring one of the songs: "I owe my thanks to Joshu Sasaki upon whose exposition of an early Chinese text I based 'Ballad of the Absent Mare.'" The metaphoric lyrics are based on the twelfth-century Ten Bulls (or Ten Ox-herding Pictures). [1] According to Anthony Reynolds 2010 Cohen memoir, "The Guests" was based on a 13th-century Persian poem and was chosen to open the album because of the enthusiastic response it had evoked when Cohen played it to friends. The album also features Cohen's interpretation of "Un Canadien errant", a song written in 1842 by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie after the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837–38. Curiously, Cohen and Lewy opted to use a Mexican Mariachi band on the song, which is arguably the only cheerful sonic outburst on what is otherwise a languid album (the Mariachi band is also employed more subtly on "The Guests" and "The Ballad of the Absent Mare"). Cohen's 2004 song "The Faith" is based on the same folk tune as "Un Canadien errant", with Cohen's collaborator Anjani Thomas acknowledging in a 2005 interview (Old Ideas: Notes on Dear Heather) that he used an alternate 1979 track for "Un Canadien errant", adding a new vocal line with completely new lyrics, for his 2004 album Dear Heather . Cohen also recorded a studio version of the disco-infused "Do I Have to Dance All Night", which had been previously released as a live single in France in 1976, but it was not included on the album.
The musicians who recorded Recent Songs with Cohen served as his tour band later that year, highlights of which can be heard on the 2001 release Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 . Cohen performed several songs from the LP in concert, such as "The Guests", "The Window", and the Sinatraesque "The Smokey Life". Speaking with Mojo's Sylvie Simmons in 2001, Cohen was effusive in his praise for the album:
The painting of Cohen on the album cover is by the artist Dianne Lawrence. [2] It is inspired by the album cover portrait taken by photographer, Hazel Field for Leonard Cohen's 2001 release, Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 . "The Guests" would be the opening song of Cohen's 1983 made-for-TV short musical I Am a Hotel , which would also feature "The Gypsy's Wife" as part of the narration.
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [3] |
Christgau's Record Guide | B [4] |
Uncut | [5] |
Recent Songs received warm reviews and was viewed as a return to form by many critics after the shocking Death of a Ladies' Man. At the time of the album's release, The New York Times said it provided "an ideal musical idiom for his idiosyncrasies" and listed it among its top ten records of 1979. In the original 1980 Rolling Stone review, Debra Rae Cohen said: "There's not a cut on Recent Songs without something to offer...and at least four or five tunes are full-fledged masterpieces. I wish I had a tape loop of; 'The Guests' which features a hold-your-breath, haunting melody." [6] The Tucson Citizen panned the "heavy touches of a Dylanesque vocal inflection on his more country numbers." [7]
William Ruhlmann of AllMusic observes, "His writing had become increasingly bitter and angry during the 1970s in the books The Energy of Slaves and Death of a Lady's Man as well as in his lyrics, but there was a new equanimity in these Recent Songs that began with the welcoming introduction of 'The Guests'...The album was full of references to absence and dislocation, but Cohen deliberately countered them with humor." Cohen biographer Anthony Reynolds took a dim view of the collection in 2010: "For all its artistry, Recent Songs sounded bland and MOR...the album as a whole ploughed a self-indulgent, middling trough." The LP peaked at # 24 in Austria (where it went gold) and hit #56 in Germany.
"Ballad of the Absent Mare" has been covered by several artists, notably Emmylou Harris on the album Cowgirl's Prayer (as "Ballad of a Runaway Horse") and Perla Batalla feat. David Hidalgo on the album Bird on the Wire: the Songs of Leonard Cohen. Martha Wainwright performs a cover version of the song "The Traitor" in the tribute film Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man . Nana Mouskouri has covered the song on several albums (Song for Liberty, Vivre Avec Toi, I'll Remember You, The Rose) and also sung the song in translation, for instance as "Das Fest" on her German language album Ich hab gelacht, ich hab geweint. The Canadian singer Patricia O'Callaghan performs covers of "The Window", "The Gypsy's Wife" and "The Smokey Life" on her fifth solo album Matador: The Songs of Leonard Cohen released in 2012.
All songs written by Leonard Cohen, except where noted.
Chart (1979–80) | Peak position |
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Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria) [8] | 24 |
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100) [9] | 56 |
Jennifer Jean Warnes is an American singer and songwriter who has performed as a vocalist on a number of film soundtracks. She has won two Grammy Awards, in 1983 for the Joe Cocker duet "Up Where We Belong" and in 1987 for the Bill Medley duet "(I've Had) The Time of My Life". Warnes also collaborated closely with Leonard Cohen.
Was (Not Was) is an American band founded in 1979 in Detroit, Michigan, by David Weiss and Don Fagenson, who adopted the stage names David Was and Don Was. Their song catalog features an eclectic mix of pop and rock styles, often featuring guest musicians from across the musical spectrum. The band's most popular period was during the 1980s and early 1990s, with their highest-charting hit, the song "Walk the Dinosaur", released in 1987 as the lead single from their 1988 album What Up, Dog?, becoming a worldwide top-40 hit and peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The band went on indefinite hiatus in the mid-1990s, but has returned sporadically since the turn of the millennium. Their most recent release was the 2008 album Boo!.
Death of a Ladies' Man is the fifth studio album by Leonard Cohen, produced and co-written by Phil Spector. The album was in some ways a departure from Cohen's typical minimalist style by using Spector's Wall of Sound recording method, which included ornate arrangements and multiple tracks of instrument overdubs. The album was originally released in the US by Warner Bros., and on CD and the rest of the world by Cohen's long-time label, Columbia Records.
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I'm Your Man is the eighth studio album by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, released on February 2, 1988, by Columbia Records. The album marked Cohen's further move to a more modern sound, with many songs having a synthesizer-oriented production. It soon became the most successful studio album which Cohen had released in the US, and it reached number one in several European countries, transforming Cohen into a best-selling artist.
Various Positions is the seventh studio album by Leonard Cohen, released in December 1984. It marked not only his turn to a modern sound and use of synthesizers, but also, after the harmonies and backing vocals from Jennifer Warnes on the previous Recent Songs (1979), an even greater contribution from Warnes, who is credited with Cohen as vocalist on all of the tracks.
New Skin for the Old Ceremony, released in 1974, is the fourth studio album by Leonard Cohen. On this album, he begins to evolve away from the rawer sound of his earlier albums, with violas, mandolins, banjos, guitars, percussion and other instruments giving the album a more orchestrated sound. The album is silver in the UK, but never entered the Billboard Top 200 in the US.
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"Un Canadien errant" is a song written in 1842 by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie after the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837–38. Some of the rebels were condemned to death, others forced into exile to the United States and as far as Australia. Gérin-Lajoie wrote the song, about the pain of exile, while taking his classical exams at the Séminaire de Nicolet. The song has become a patriotic anthem for certain groups of Canadians who have at a point in their history experienced the pain of exile. In addition to those exiled following the Lower Canada Rebellion, it has come to hold particular importance for the rebels of the Upper Canada Rebellion, and for the Acadians, who suffered mass deportation from their homeland in the Great Upheaval between 1755 and 1763. The Acadian version is known as "Un Acadien errant."
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Spectral Mornings is the third studio album by English guitarist and songwriter Steve Hackett, released in May 1979 on Charisma Records. It is his first to feature members of his touring band, which many Hackett fans consider as the "classic line-up". The musicians are his brother John Hackett, Nick Magnus, Dik Cadbury, John Shearer, and Pete Hicks.
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Harvey Phillip Spector was an American record producer and songwriter. He is best known for his innovative recording practices and entrepreneurship in the 1960s along with his two trials and conviction for the murder of Lana Clarkson in the 2000s. Spector developed the Wall of Sound, a production style that is characterized for its diffusion of tone colors and dense orchestral sound, which he described as a "Wagnerian" approach to rock and roll. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in pop music history and one of the most successful producers of the 1960s.
Woody Lissauer is a musical artist, with a large body of work going back to the 1970s.
Henry Lewy, born Heinz Lewy, was a German-born American sound engineer and record producer, who was best known for his work on many critically acclaimed and successful rock and folk albums of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly those by Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joan Baez, Stephen Bishop, and Judee Sill.
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John Bilezikjian was an Armenian-American musician and composer. Most renowned as an oud master, he also played the violin, mandolin and dumbek. He was also a traditional and contemporary singer singing in Armenian, but also in Turkish, Assyrian/Syriac, English and known for his contributions to world music as a solo act and in collaborations with renowned artists. He established his own record company, Dantz Records in Laguna Hills, California making many recordings, and appearing in tens of film soundtracks.
"The Gypsy's Wife" is a song written by the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen that was first released on his sixth studio album Recent Songs (1979). Live recordings of it appear as the fourth track on Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 (2001) and as the thirteenth track on Cohen's Live in London (2009), and the sixth track on ‘Live in Dublin (2013). It continued to feature regularly in his stage performances until his death.