I resisted Laughing Len for decades, finding his delivery hard on my ears (see also Bob Dylan), while appreciating his prowess as a wordsmith, and I suspect I first came to listen by a fairly circuitous route. I heard the song First We Take Manhattan in a Brighton record shop (almost certainly the REM cover), and it became something of an earworm.
Only later did I discover it was a Cohen song, and finding it was on this album I bought it. It opens this album and still maintains an air of menace to this day, the oblique lyrics still fascinating. Ain't No Cure For Love is a much more orthodox love song, then the far darker Everybody Knows, repetitive in tone, but with enough clever and amusing lyrical content to keep the interest. I'm Your Man, is another straightforward love song, well constructed and lyrically deep, but not really turning my head. The second half opens with Take This Waltz, again, a cleverly constructed song, which lacks that wow! factor. Jazz Police livens things up a bit, although I can't help but thinking the chorus owes more than a nod to the theme from Star Trek. I Can't Forget is a very listenable love song, one of the better ones, and the album ends with the slower, gentler Tower of Song.
I do like this album, but listening to it again just how much I feel Cohen's voice works on the darker songs, and, to me, less on others. Having said that, none of the songs here are bad ones, some are great ones and there's lyrical interest throughout.
4* - For me, the high point of the Cohen I've heard.
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