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. Before its release, the album was streamed online by NPR on January 22 and on January 23 by The Guardian.
Background
Cohen's international concert tours of the late 2000s were prompted by the fact his former manager made off with his life's savings. At their conclusion in 2009, Cohen decided to keep working and began making his twelfth studio album. Fans of Cohen had long become accustomed to long intervals in between albums - between 1979 and 1988 he released three - but the tour appeared to re-energize him, as biographer Sylvie Simmons observed in a 2012 Mojo cover story: "After his former manager helped herself to his savings, leaving him nothing to retire on, Leonard, in his seventies, having not been on the road in 15 years, embarked on one of the most remarkable, and remarkably successful, tours in music history, playing three-hour shows each night. And when it finished...instead of coming home and putting his feet up, he went straight to work on a new album and, even more extraordinary, in less than 12 months he finished it."
Recording and composition
Old Ideas was recorded in Los Angeles at Cohen's own studio in his house and at 7th Street Sound with Patrick Leonard and Ed Sanders. Many of the songs explore some of Cohen's favorite themes: mortality, sex, depression, and the quest for love in an apocalyptic world. Discussing the song "Amen" in his review of the album in Uncut, Andy Gill observes: Religious imagery is also prevalent, and many of the songs feature Cohen on the guitar, a change from his recent albums which had been dominated by synthesizers. Cohen worked closely with co-producer Patrick Leonard, writing four of the tracks with him: the resigned "Going Home," "Show Me the Place," "Anyhow" and "Come Healing." As Cohen told Mojo in 2013, he met the producer when he was making an album with Cohen's son, singer Adam Cohen: One other song, "Crazy to Love You," was the result of a collaboration with jazz singerAnjani, who had first released the song on her 2006 Cohen-produced album Blue Alert. The songs "Darkness" and "Lullaby" had actually been debuted on his recent tours before being committed to tape. Cohen had originally wanted to call his previous 2004 studio album Old Ideas but opted for Dear Heather instead, fearing that fans might mistake it for a compilation album.
Reception
The album received uniformly positive reviews from publications including Rolling Stone, the Chicago Tribune, and The Guardian. At a record release party for the album in January 2012, Cohen spoke with The New York Times reporter Jon Pareles who states that "mortality was very much on his mind and in his songs ." Pareles goes on to characterize the album as "an autumnal album, musing on memories and final reckonings, but it also has a gleam in its eye. It grapples once again with topics Mr. Cohen has pondered throughout his career: love, desire, faith, betrayal, redemption. Some of the diction is biblical; some is drily sardonic." In a four star review, Victoria Segal of Mojo called Old Ideas, "a quietly surprising album, full of grace, full of sadness, but also, most importantly, full of life." Uncut awarded the album four stars. The album was named as a nominee for the 2012 Polaris Music Prize on June 14, 2012. The album was listed at #13 on Rolling Stone's list of the top 50 albums of 2012, saying "Cohen adapts to this uncharted age with a lifetime's worth of grace and wit." Rolling Stone also named the song Going Home the 20th best song of 2012.
Track listing
All songs written by Leonard Cohen, except where noted.
