Consumer Guide Album

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man [Columbia, 1988]
A European best-seller from the Francophone capital of the Western Hemisphere, Cohen isn't the grizzled folk-rock parvenu we take him for. He works a far older and more honorable tradition, that of the French chansonnier, the singing poet who'll cheerfully appropriate any simple music that fits his meter without giving a second thought to how authentic or commercialized it might be. Because words are his stock in trade, Cohen's music rarely obtrudes no matter how classy or schlocky its usages. So despite what some consider a misguided attempt to yoke stark instrumentation and femme chorus, his latest recording seems no more or less natural/unnatural than his previous offerings, and the poems are his most consistent in a decade. Envoi: "But you'll be hearing from me, baby, long after I'm gone/I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song." A-