第52届格莱美音乐奖终身成就奖得主，加拿大国宝级大师Leonard Cohen的个人第十二张录音室专辑《Old Ideas》将通过Columbia唱片公司全球发行，这也是Cohen自2004年《Dear Heather》之后8年来的首张录音室专辑。专辑名称《Old Ideas》实际上是2004年专辑的使用名，但后来临发行时Cohen怕这个名字给人一种此专辑会是精选辑的感觉而决定改为《Dear Heather》。
新专辑由之前未发行的10首歌曲组成，包括他最近演出的曲目《Darkness》。同时莱昂纳多·科恩也表示，希望能在77岁高龄的情况下再完成一次巡演，不过毕竟年事已高，他也流露出了对这一心愿的担忧，“但我还不太确定是否能有机会。”
上个月22日，Leonard Cohen官方网站发布新专辑《Old Ideas》新闻通告，内容包括新专辑封面，部分内页设计以及10首曲目。同时，新专辑的第一首单曲《Show Me The Place》以数字形式通过SoundCloud网站发布。本月23日，Leonard Cohen官方Youtube频道发布了由Aaron Hymes 导演并制作的《Show Me The Place》动画MV。
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Ideas is the twelfth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, released in January 2012. It is Cohen's highest-charting release in the United States, reaching number 3 on the Billboard 200, 44 years after the release of his first album. The album topped the charts in 11 countries, including Finland, where Cohen became, at the age of 77, the oldest chart-topper, during the album's debut week. The album was released on January 27, 2012 in some countries and on January 31, 2012 in the U.S. It had been streamed online by NPR on January 22[23] and on January 23 by The Guardian. (wiki)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Thom Jurek
While it's not normally a quality one associates with Leonard Cohen, he's always possessed a droll, self-effacing sense of humor. He expresses it on the opening track of Old Ideas in the third person: "I love to speak with Leonard/He's a sportsman and a shepherd/He's a lazy bastard/Living in a suit...." Have no fear, however, Cohen's topical standards, on yearning, struggle, spirituality, love, loss, lust, and mortality are all in abundance here, offered with a poet's insight. It is among Cohen's most spiritual recordings because it brings all of his familiar topics into the fold with a graceful acceptance. He's surrounded by friends on Old Ideas. Patrick Leonard, Dino Soldo, and Anjani Thomas get production and co-writing credits. Sharon Robinson, Dana Glover, Jennifer Warnes, and the Webb Sisters all appear on backing vocals. Cohen mixes up the musical forms far more than he has in the past. The loungey electronic keyboards on "Going Home" are balanced by Glover's female backing chorale, an acoustic piano, and Bela Santelli's violin. The sly, minor-key Gypsy jazz groove on "Amen" is played by a banjo, violin, and Cohen's guitar; it tempers his searing lyric, which posits the notion that the totality of love, divine or otherwise, can only truly be achieved when the object of desire has seen his worst, metaphorically and literally. "Show Me the Place" finds Cohen once again adopting the Protestant hymnal as stirringly as he did on "Halleluja" -- albeit more quietly -- and wedding it to his simple, direct melodic sensibility. The song is a prayer, not for redemption, but to go ever deeper into the cloud of spiritual unknowing before his demise, to discover the terrain where suffering itself is birthed. Warnes' gorgeous backing vocals, piano, guitar, and violin accompany his beneath-the-basement, cracked-leather baritone in delivering the song with conviction and vulnerability.
Cohen's live band joins him on "Darkness," where he evokes, musically, his love of both late-'40s R&B and gospel, even as he frankly discusses his own -- and everyone's -- entrance into the big goodnight. He also revisits the spartan sound of his early career with "Crazy to Love You," written with Thomas, on which his only accompaniment is his acoustic guitar. Here, he wrestles with an unwanted but nonetheless nagging attachment to erotic desire. "Come Healing" is another hymn, with Glover's vocals, church organ, violin, and Cohen's croaking, old-man-in-the-pew vocal; he sings with reverence: "O see the darkness yielding/That tore the light apart/Come healing of the reason/Come healing of the heart...." "Banjo" is a country-blues that gives the songwriter a chance to indulge his love for Hank Williams while reflecting on Hurricane Katrina as Soldo's New Orleans-inspired horns add a haunted effect to the tune. Cohen speaks not only for himself, but the ghosts of restless spirits wandering in his vision. "Lullabye"'s lyrics, accompanied by a high lonesome harmonica and a whispering jazz organ, counterintuitively offer a gentle comfort to the disconsolate. "Different Sides," with its slow, loopy groove, is a shuffle that addresses unresolved conflict in lust and law (spiritual and carnal), bringing Old Ideas to a close with an ironic tension. Cohen meets conflict head-on and accepts it for what it is -- you can almost see him simultaneously singing sincerely while slyly winking an eye. Old Ideas is a very good Cohen album; it may be even be a great one; but that doesn't matter in the present. What does is that it bears listening to, over and over (and over) again.