If your weekend is full of wounded egos, loneliness, anger, blame, and recriminations, lean on Leonard Cohen and a nice whisky (the order is interchangeable). You’ll still feel sad. But, at the very least, more romantic.
I think this cover of Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” by Aurora is one of the bestest ever. Just like the original, it’s still subtle, spare, and quietly devastating.
“Famous Blue Raincoat” is the sixth track on Leonard Cohen’s third album, Songs of Love and Hate (1971). It’s delivered in Cohen’s warm, recitative style, the song takes the form of a letter (partly composed in an unusual poetic metre called amphibrachs). The lyric tells the story of a love triangle among the speaker, a woman named Jane, and the male addressee, who is identified only briefly as “my brother, my killer”.
The lyrics contain references to the German love song “Lili Marlene”, to Scientology, and to Clinton Street, Manhattan. Cohen lived there in the 1970s when it was a lively Latino area.
Jennifer Warnes, she was a backup singer for Cohen in the early 70s, singles this out as one’s of Cohen’s best melodies: “Leonard isn’t known for his great melodies, but he actually is a great melody writer. If you take the words off and just listen to the melodies, he’s really, really good. It’s just not known, because we’re so distracted by the poetry.”
So, on your last week’s bitter Friday, with beautiful whisky and Field Commander Cohen, did you ever go clear?
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Featured image via Billboard.
