Live in London

by Leonard Cohen

I remember first being exposed to Leonard Cohen (at least consciously) in a grade 11 English class, where we all laughed at his odd voice (early Cohen - Suzanne to be exact), and the teacher got quite annoyed with us, as we weren't really listening. I have no idea what the purpose of the lesson was, but some of the lyrics stuck with me.

A couple of years later, Cohen's voice was used to fantastic effect on the soundtrack to the movie 'Natural Born Killers', prompting me to hunt down 'The Future' and to read his novel 'Beautiful Losers'. At that point, I became a fan for life.

This double-disk album was recorded recently in London during a massive concert Cohen held there. When you consider his age, it's unlikely that there will be many more opportunities for Cohen to put on a show of this nature, and so it is very good that we have such a well-recorded record of his brilliance.

The show sounds like it was a lot of fun, and Cohen still sounds fantastic throughout. There are a couple of songs that seem unnecessary, but there aren't any major omissions (except for 'Famous Blue Raincoat', which I would have loved to have heard on here). The applause and between-song banter can get a little tiring, keeping this disk from getting a lot of play, but as a document of one particular night, this is a very important cd to own.