Old Ideas is an apt title for Leonard Cohen’s first new studio album in eight years, insomuch as the album’s themes are familiar ones that weave through Cohen’s collections of song and poetry - mortality, Judeo-Christian morality, faith, and love - leaping between the darkly comedic and the tragic. His superb song-writing still underscores his significance as a poet, revisiting old themes and sounds in new ways on his 12th studio album, released by Columbia Records on January 31.

His voice, like contemporaries Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, has grown increasingly gravelly, dark, and deep over the years. His lyrics are practically whispered, backed by the tried and true Jennifer Warnes, Sharon Robinson, and the Webb sisters. His tone, as with many of his earlier albums, is serious and somber, at times with dark humor, reflecting back on 77 years of life.

It has been more than 44 years since he released his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, but his lyrics are as poignant as ever. He deals with interrelated problems basic to all of humanity: love, aging, regret, forgiveness, and change. The music itself is at times reminiscent of the later Dylan (in particular Time Out of Mind and more so Together Through Life), a bit jazzy, a bit bluesy. At other times the listener is channeled back to Cohen’s 1984 album Various Positions, with the prominent role of background singers carrying the melody (think “Hallelujah”). In tracks like “Banjo” and “Amen,” listeners can trace the spirit of gypsy jazz artists like Django Reinhardt and contemporary folk-rock legends like Tom Waits. And yet on others, such as “Different Sides,” we can still find the much subdued aftertaste of the later Cohen’s 2004 album Dear Heather, with the subtler, more graceful use of synthesizers and keyboards.

When critics interpreted Bob Dylan’s albums of the late '80s and early '90s as the end of his creative genius, with contrived lyrics and an overreliance on ragged covers of folk standards, they were blown away with the genius and complexity of 1997’s highly acclaimed Time Out of Mind, an album in which mortality also weighted very heavily.  In much the same way as Dylan did with that album, Old Ideas could be viewed as a rebound album for Cohen (though his discography is considerable smaller than Dylan’s and he never released an equivalent to Under the Red Sky or Good As I Been to You), in the sense that it is his first new album since 2004 and arguably his best album in decades, at the very least since 2001’s Ten New Songs.  Like Dylan, Cohen also changed technique, laying down the tools and style employed on his synth-dominated albums, and reflecting on life, romance, and forgiveness in a familiar, though fresh and honest way.     

If one were to compare this album with the entire cannon of Cohen’s work as a songwriter, it certainly stands up against some of his greater works, returning in some ways to his early '80s sounds and in others (especially in the track “Crazy to Love You”) to his late-60s and '70s roots, with a greater reliance on acoustic instruments.  But comparing the later fedora-wearing poet-philosopher with the earlier Cohen is in some ways a mistake. Cohen’s early works, in particular, have been so lauded that they cast heavy shadows over the landscape of his artistry, not unlike the dark shadows that have a dominant place on the new album’s cover art. While it is difficult at times to separate an artist from his work, when the album is appreciated on its own merit and not compared to the Cohen catalogue it can be regarded as a phenomenal, and in many ways cryptic album, a statement on life’s disappointments which we all face now and again.

The 10-track album is filled with deeply moving verse that leaves the listener interpreting the lyrics differently upon each listen, especially true for tracks like “Going Home,” “Show Me the Place,” and “Different Sides.” On the bluesy number, “Darkness,” a suitable title for one of the album’s sulkier tracks, he mutters the tragically comedic lines: “I caught the darkness/Drinking from your cup/I said, ‘Is this contagious?’/You said, ‘Just drink it up.’” Then shortly after, as the track quickly spirals into gloomy despair: “I’ve got no future/I know my days are few/The present’s not that pleasant/Just a lot of things to do.” The jazzy and occasionally somber tune “Anyhow” reflects on failed love, adding more humor as the protagonist, who “confess[ed]” something (infidelity perhaps?) pleads his former lover to “hate [him] less”: “I even heard you say you never ever loved me/But could you love me anyway?”  In the charmingly acoustic “Crazy to Love You,” reminiscent of everything good in Cohen’s early works, he continues with this theme of soured love and one that is all too familiar to any who has ever tried to impress a man or woman with whom we have little besides attraction in common: “I had to go crazy to love you/Had to let everything fall/Had to be people I hated/Had to be no one at all.”  The story is tragic, but the music, the delivery and the structure make the tragic hauntingly beautiful. 

Whereas the first half of the album focuses more on regret, the second emphasizes themes of forgiveness.  The music is lighter, in the hymn-like “Banjo,” with an angelic use of background singers like a gospel choir, and the melodic “Lullaby.” “Come Healing” reflects the change in focus better than perhaps any other song: “O, see the darkness yielding/That tore the light apart/Come healing of the reason/Come healing of the heart.” 

Cohen is one of those songwriters who is respected and revered by many of his contemporaries as a living legend in his field, crafting exceptional music and lyrics, not to mention his works of literature and poetry. Old Ideas reminds us of this.  Though the album may deal in fact with “old ideas” in terms of style, theme, and sound, pairing Cohen with many of his former collaborators, it does so in a fresh way, contributing yet another gem to Cohen’s already impressive discography.  Seventy-seven years into his journey of life, Leonard Cohen proves that he still has it, a songwriter and poet of mythic proportions.