NPR.org and Leonard Cohen

Listened to this twice this morning and highly recommend it:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101034642

Wait, I'd recommend anything by Cohen anyway, so I might be a little too partial to be taken seriously, but anyway, this is the next next best thing (for now, that is, right until march 31th when his Live In London DVD gets released) for anyone who has not gotten a chance to see him live. I was lucky enough to see him in June 2008, in Montreal, the first of three shows he did in there then. It was amazing. Godly. Breathtaking. 74 and more energy, more class than anyone else I'd ever seen live, and I heard notes in there that night that I never thought any human being could possibly produce.

After a year, it's still safe for me to say it was the best show of my life. Unless Freddie Mercury comes back to life, and John Deacon comes out of retirement, there are very little chances of any band or artist ever topping that night. I suspect only Tom Waits showing up in Montreal could beat it, but for now, better not count on it.

The problem with Cohen is that once you listen to his lyrics, and ultimately fall in love with them, it gets much so hard to go back to some lame, repetitive songs of the "I wanna rock and roll all night and party everyday" genre. I love his singing, but outside of his rendition of Hallelujah (go away, Jeff Buckley fans: I don't care what you say, Cohen's original version IS the best), the best part of the night might easily have been his heartfelt, intensely emotional (hot!) reading of A Thousand Kisses Deep, which I'm very pleased to say that NPR also added to their podcast.

If I recall correctly, his voice on it is not as optimal as it was in Montreal, but it's still fabulous, and the amount of soul and emotions he puts in his songs makes it worth sitting for an hour and fifteen minutes at the computer, and bare in mind that this probably isn't half the show he did. You see, Mr. Cohen is very generous with his time. We're talking about a three hour show here. The concert also includes Suzanne, Chelsea Hotel #2, Tower Of Song, The Partisan, Take This Walts, So Long Marianne, and a few more, so his very well cover his greatest hits.

7.8/10 (why so low? Too short for my tastes)

A Tindersticks Ticket

Experimenting again with this whole blogging thing. I once had one, off a music forum (yeah, I'm badly addicted to them), but I supposed having an actual one is not a bad idea either. So here we go again, I guess I should be talking about myself and stuff, but since I'm more interested in music than in sharing boring details about myself, we'll... skip to the end.

Today's main interest for me (besides having just started "la relâche" as we call it in French, hence being on vacation, which was way overdue) is having just found out, thanks to last.fm (shamefull publicity, I guess, but I live for this site these days), that Tindersticks will be in Montreal on March 9th, which is an amazing news, considering that I had never expected to see this band live here. Love that band. Love the vocals. I only discovered them last summer, and have since acquired three of their albums: Tindersticks, Tindersticks II, as well as the recent The Hungry Saw, which means that I have four more to go, darn it. I plan on acquiring Curtains in particular very soon.

Some of their songs are weaker, I'm sure, but how am I supposed not to love a band with such a lead vocalist? Stuart A. Staples could be reading a freaking fast-food menu board and I'd most likely still get turned on. I remember reading somewhere on youtube comments about him: first someone said that he sounded like Leonard Cohen had mated with Nick Cave, and someone replied that it was like Nick Cave had mated with God himself, which can't be too far from the truth considering that for me, the Holy Trinity of male vocalists is these three guys. I guess that makes me a bad Catholic or something.

Crap, I forgot Tom Waits in there. Oh well, Tom Waits will take on Hades role or something then, but we'll focus on Tom some other time. And come to think of it, I'm forgetting a bunch of lovely, breathtaking vocalists too (Steve Marriot, Arthur Brown and David Byron come to mind).

Anyway. So besides the vocals, Tindersticks have these very lush, quiet, anything but pop orchestrations with lots of strings and piano, as well as brass here in there, a perfect complement to their sweet, sad melodies that seem to cover all sort of loves and sins. They're rainy Sunday afternoon, cold sunny Monday morning music, and everything in between.

So I will be seeing them, and am mighty excited about it, despite my usual worries about new venues. But 31$ for a ticket is quite a bargain for a concert these days, and it's almost laughable to think that such a quality band sell tickets so cheap. That'll be a few days after having seen The Strawbs, by the way, something I plan to comment later on as well.