Leonard Cohen, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts, Montreal, June 25 2008
Wow.

Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier is a 3000-seat venue with three balcony levels, of which papersky and I were on the highest; it does however have such excellent acoustics that this was not by any means a problem.

Leonard Cohen took the stage at 7.30 with a nine-person backing band (three female vocalists, keyboard player, drummer, bass guitar/double bass, electric guitar, one various-other-stringed-instruments player and one wind instruments player who, even against the excellent standard of everyone else, was astounding, one just does not see someone that good on flute and on sax very often). The show opened with "Dance Me to the End of Love", and then went into "The Future", and somewhere about a third of the way into that everything just came together and took off. ("The Future" is IMO a song that needs to take absolutely no prisoners in order to work.) The first set, about an hour long, was mostly focused on more recent songs, only "Bird on a Wire" and "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" were really early work. It was a heartbreaking version of "Bird on a Wire", too, and taken straight into "Everybody Knows" with what I think was a beefed-up and even more insistent backing. Cohen stopped to tell us it was fourteen or fifteen years since he had played here ("I was sixty years old. Just a kid with a crazy dream.") and to have that much vocal power, and presence, and absolute mastery of what one is doing at seventy-five is just astounding. The first hour ended with an amazing rendition of "Anthem".

papersky and I were wondering what to expect of the second half, and kind of thinking that if it followed the pattern of the first it would be mostly I'm Your Man/The Future era material with a little from Ten New Songs and a couple of "golden oldies", and we reckoned we would definitely get "Tower of Song" and "Hallelujah". This was definitely insufficient faith on our behalf.

The second set opened with "Tower of Song", all right, and a perfectly good version it was; but then all the light went down but for a single spot on Cohen, making him look exactly like the cover of Songs from a Room, and there was a beautifully stark "Avalanche", and then "Suzanne", and nobody watching could have been in the slightest doubt about which was the song he was happy to own to but really considers a minor work, and which was the real masterpiece. And "Hallelujah" with force and passion enough to make it almost new again. "Democracy", which I could not believe I was actually getting to hear live; I do love that song, and its hour has definitely come round again. "I'm Your Man" as a love song to his hometown audience. A whole pile of new verses to "A Thousand Kisses Deep" as a recitation. Even "The Gypsy's Wife", which is not a song one expects to hear in this company.

And then we got basically another hour of encores. "So Long, Marianne", "First We Take Manhattan", "Sisters of Mercy", phenomenal version of "Closing Time", "If It Be Your Will" recited and then sung by the backing singers... this is basically a whole-career show (though there was nothing from Dear Heather) and a perfectly constructed one at that. The third time everyone came back on stage he opened into "I tried to leave you, I don't deny... " and the house cracked up; and finally left with an a cappella version of "Whither Thou Goest". There was so much love, and joy, and passion in this, and also such consummate skill, in making it all perfect and effortlessly perfect at that. I can't think of a better concert I have been to; there are bands for whom the recorded music is only half the experience, but this live show was a whole new dimension. I may get more coherent ways of saying why it worked so well later, but for now I am just sputtering in awe, and immensely grateful to have had the opportunity.