Leonard Cohen | 2009 New York

Christmas 2008, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah was No. 1 on the UK Christmas singles chart (the song was covered by X Factor winner Alexandra Burke). While that’s mighty fine showing for the 74-year-old singer-songwriter, that has not stopped Cohen, who toured Australia in January-February, from donating US$200,000 to the victims of the country’s bushfires.

After leaving Australia, Cohen played his first American concert in 15 years at the Beacon Theatre in New York on February 19. With his voice low, Cohen sounds like a very much sweeter Tom Waits but it is his meditative delivery that makes this ideal for late-night listening.

This is what Jason Gross, in the Village Voice, reported: “Decked out in an appropriately black suit, he was almost sprightly, kneeling and buckling and shuffling and swaying to his mid- and slow-tempo songs, his gaze trained dramatically skyward and his eyes closed as he clutched the mic. Even his voice had regained its gravelly hush, sounding better than it has on his last two albums.

“And while his eerie upscale-lounge-lizard persona still gives off chills (especially on the lusty “I’m Your Man”), it’s his latter-day apocalyptic visions that carry the most resonance in these shitty post-millennial times. “Everybody Knows” now sounded less like doomy fiction and more like he was gloomily reciting present-day headlines; he particularly savored the frightening chorus of “The Future” (”It is murder”).”




Leonard Cohen
Beacon Theatre, New York, February 19, 2009. 
Very good FM recording; not complete show.


00:00 Dance Me To The End Of Love [5:34] 
05:34 The Future [6:49] 
12:24 Chelsea Hotel No. 2 [4:06] 
16:30 Tower Of Song [7:16] 
23:47 Suzanne [3:43] 
27:30 The Partisan [5:13] 
32:43 Hallelujah [7:49] 
40:33 A Thousand Kisses Deep [3:23] 
43:56 Take This Waltz [9:20] 
53:17 So Long, Marianne [6:27] 
59:44 First We Take Manhattan [6:29] 
1:06:14 Democracy [5:18]