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Leonard Cohen

Dear Heather

60s 70s 180 gram vinyl pressing while there are some familiar elements present much of 'dear heather' is a stark contrast to virtually all of leonard cohen's previous recorded work where the canadian troubadour's previous albums all sounded like carefully constructed towers of song built piece by painstaking piece and cohen has confirmed this as his working process 'dear heather' seems to be an entirely more spontaneous offering one might speculate that longtime buddhist cohen has taken the precepts of zen to heart in presenting a batch of compositions unmarred by the effects of obvious labour lyrically and melodically these songs are more sparse and pareddown than anything else in cohen's catalog some are whittled down to only a simple recitation repeated numerous times over a skeletal chord progression by simplifying his approach to such an extreme degree it seems as though cohen is trying to get as close as possible to the heart of his work without the literary trappings of his past accomplishments nevertheless one link with his previous work is the bonus live cut tacked on to the end of the disc in the tradition of past quirky cohen covers like irving berlin's 'always' and richard blakeslee's 'passing thru' the gravelvoiced singer tackles the country classic 'tennessee waltz' with trademark aplomb that also reminds the listener of cohen's everpresent sense of humour