Field Commander Cohen: The Press

The Press on Field Commander Cohen: Tour Of 1979
June 2001 Brazil's Valor Economico - An Album Review Contributor: Alexandre Marino	Since he started his singer career, in the 60's, the Canadian poet and novelist Leonard Cohen has always been undervalued as a writer who occasionally sings. This record of concerts happened in England in '79 and proves the opposite: he is the author of some very good songs, built in involving melodies, valued by excellent musicians. His voice and intelligent and sarcastic lyrics blend well with rhythms and instruments. This is the best Leonard Cohen live album, because of the technical quality and repertory.

April 26, 2001 Rolling Stone - An Album Review	*** * * *** ...diving headlong into the squirrelly intersections of pop and dramatic music, exploring the vagaries of a topic that, for Cohen, was a poetic cosmos unto itself: romance. This recording demonstrates how adeptly he recast that world. His six-man band, Passenger, not only follows but drives and animates his songs. Listen to the title track, in which Passenger easily negotiate the changes: from a march into the graceful slide of a ballad, then into a cheesy, skittery pop tune. Cohen also performs with a backup singer, Jennifer Warnes, who in "The Smokey Life" and "The Gypsy's Wife" represents another sensuous and intelligent reason why Field Commander Cohen is so elaborately, and yet simply, awesome. -- James Hunter

April 16, 2001 U.S.'s New York Observer - An Album Review	[A]dmirers of Mr. Cohen can whet their appetites with Field Commander Cohen: Tour Of 1979 (Columbia), a spiritied collection of live performances culled from a number of dates in England that fell at the end of a European tour. Some old favorites, such as "So Long, Marianne" and "Bird On The Wire," are included here, but quite a few of the tracks come from an uncomfortable transition period in Mr. Cohen's career that occurred during the mid- to late 70's, after the cult success of his first three albums of folk music, but before Mr. Cohen settled on the electronic-keyboard sound that led to his excellent comeback album, I'm Your Man, in 1988. Still, Mr. Cohen wrote many very good songs during this period, and it's fortunate that someone in his camp decided to release live versions of some of them--particularly "The Window," "The Smokey Life," "The Gypsy's Wife" and "The Guests," tracks that originally appeared on the album Recent Songs, which was released shortly before the tour documented here. The studio versions of these songs were all somewhat leaden, but live, the songs benefit from slightly more improvisational arrangements and a more spacious sound. Not surprisingly, several of the tracks look at relationships from the standpoint of middle age. The characters in Mr. Cohen's songs tend to be at the end of their affairs, when emotions are complex, rather than at the beginning. "The Smokey Life" treats a dissolved romance with bittersweet resignation. Backed by subdued, bluesy guitar and a brushed snare, the song's centerpiece is Mr. Cohen's smoldering duet with longtime backup singer Jennifer Warnes, whose ethereal alto expertly conveys longing and melancholy. "The Window" is a slow, expansive waltz in which the singer questions his remote lover while Raffi Hakopian's exquisite, Gypsy-like violin and Ms. Warnes' backing vocals weave in and out of the background. The slow death of ideals is another one of Mr. Cohen's favorite topics, and he gets around to it on the album's title track, a dialogue of self and soul in which Mr. Cohen addresses himself: "I never asked but I heard that you cast your lot with the poor / That you be this and nothing more / Than just some grateful, faithful woman's favorite singing millionaire, / The patron saint of envy and the grocer of despair, / Working for the Yankee dollar." On this live version, Mr. Cohen tosses in a few lines from Morey Amsterdam's novelty song "Rum and Coca-Cola," a tune popularized by World War II sweethearts the Andrews Sisters. For those fans who recall that Mr. Cohen entertained troops and sipped cognac with Ariel Sharon during the Yom Kippur War, the inserted lines add another level of irony to a song already brimming with satire and guilt. Mr. Cohen's voice is warm and strong throughout, and still has some of the high end that is not so evident on his last two studio albums. The overall quality of the recording is good too, save for the fact that some of the acoustic instruments sound as though they were fed into the mix through electric pickups. In some instances this accentuates the bright, percussive bite of picked strings, as with the oud (an Eastern lute-like instrument, played with virtuosic flair by John Bilezikjian) on "Lover Lover Lover." At other times, though, it robs Mr. Cohen's gentle acoustic arpeggios and Roscoe Beck's sinewy fretless-bass lines of resonance. This is the third live album Mr. Cohen has released... This record sheds more light on those often-overlooked in-between years. As for the classics showcased on Field Commander Cohen, Mr. Cohen offers up his best-known lyrics almost wistfully... On "So Long, Marianne," Mr. Cohen adjusts the third verse slightly to say, "Ah, we met when was it? / We were almost young." It's an acknowledgment that his youth has departed. But it's precisely because Mr. Cohen is so attuned to those moments of loss that his songs never seem to show their age. -- I-Huei Go

April 2001 UK's Uncut magazine - An Album Review Contributor: Lizzie Madder	[T]hese performances - recorded on his December 1979 British tour in Hammersmith and Brighton, previously available only on bootlegs - are more than welcome. Backed by a band of intuitive sensitivity and an unobtrusive girlie chorus (Jennifer Warnes) he draws heavily from New Skin for the Old Ceremony (three songs), Recent Songs (four) and the first album (three). The voice is relaxed and assured, his unhurried timing is inspired, and you can hear an almost spiritual communication between performer and what sounds more like a church congregation than a rock'n'roll audience. -- Nigel Williamson

March 3-9, 2001 UK's The Times Supplement - An Album Review Contributor: Lizzie Madder	[H]is British tour in 1979...were wonderful concerts which established an almost spiritual bond between the performer and his audience. Cohen's voice is relaxed and assured on the likes of "Bird On The Wire" and "The Stranger Song," while his unhurried timing is consistently masterful. And, despite his famously miserabilist image, what comes over most strikingly is his wry and often overlooked sense of humour.

March 2001 Germany's Audio Live - An Album Review Contributor: Adi Heindl Translator: Judith Braun	"Oldie CD of the Month" Music: five of five ears - Sound: three of five ears Leonard Cohen, live in 1979 and with his band, is in the best form of his life... In their well-balanced choice of programme, the recordings, taken at two concerts in London and Brighton, make a veritable exhibition of his work better than a mere best-of collection. Alongside less well-known pieces, one can listen to highlights of his career, such as "So Long, Marianne," "Bird On The Wire" or "The Stranger Song." The record mesmerizes by its dream-like balance between Cohen's warm, coaxing, expressive singing and the subtle, perfectly made-to-measure arrangements. Jennifer Warnes' parcitipation in the background choir is an asset in itself. However, the excellent musicians contribute even more crucially to the sensasional live experience. Regardless whether it is the powerful shalala-rock that accompanies "Memories," the delightfully delicious strings in the "Gypsy Wife" or the dixie-groove in "Why Don't You Try," we experience nothing but utter perfection. -- Claus Böhm

March 2001 Spain's 40 magazine - An Album Review Contributor: Jarkko Arjatsalo Translators: Patricia Jane St. John Danko & Antonio Loureiro Leonardo	There is no pretension in Cohen's concerts, except that of telling his own stories about the human condition, all from the point of view of one who has lived intensely. Because for the Jew of the profound voice, each performance is a solemn ritual full of evocative images and feelings, and this is apparent in the first listening of this CD, recorded in live concert. Throughout several decades dedicated to intensity and poetry (the influence of which has penetrated deeply into all spheres of contemporary pop, from Nick Cave to Tindersticks, and including Depeche Mode, Jack or Javier Alvarez), and including his body of recordings, today considered true jewels, plus eleven published books, this Pilgrim resurfaces with a live concert performed some years back. Accompanied by a wonderful band and the voices of Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson, Field Commander Cohen throws at the listener all the chosen words of the singer with the intention of penetrating deeply, into more than just one's ears. Fluctuating emotions, urbane sentiments, the pleasure of writing and setting to music our very feelings. All the songs on the CD -- "The Stranger Song," "Bird On The Wire," "So Long Marianne," and the tremendous "Lover Lover Lover" were recorded during Cohen's world tour in 1979. It's a good time to rediscover the king of songwriters.

March 2001 Germany's Hotvision - An Album Review Contributor: Christof Graf Translator: Judith Braun	[This] smart Canadian shifts one gear down and starts out by tossing us a live album with recordings from December 1979 in London and Brighton. The crowd celebrates him frantically. Those had been the times. And such acts will never stop. All this cannot be coincidence.

March 2001 UK's Manchester Evening News - An Album Review Contributor: Big Al	A long while ago, I spent the better part of a day, on and off, with Leonard Cohen and to this day he remains one of the most incisively intelligent and, yes, funniest men I've ever met. As it happens that meeting was during the same British tour, at the end of the seventies when Cohen couldn't have been less fashionable in this country (nor cared less about that fact), which two decades later has formed the basis for this impressive album, recorded at shows in London and Brighton. Perhaps it is just me but Cohen's sly humour has rarely been more evident than on these live recordings. I'd forgotten, though, quite how good and marvellously full-sounding the band, featuring Jennifer Warnes on vocals, were, clarifying songs from the then-current albums and giving a veritable new lease of live to the inevitable older favourites. -- Kevin Bourke

March 2001 All Music Guide (AMG) - An Album Review	AMG EXPERT REVIEW: As he'd firmly established himself as a poet and novelist years before he made his first album, Leonard Cohen is often regarded less as a musician than as a writer who happens to sing. But his songs have always displayed a subtle but mesmerizing melodic sense which dovetails gracefully with his lyrics, and though his craggy voice has its limits, no one else interprets Cohen's songs with his degree of intelligence and quiet passion. In 1979, after the release of his album Recent Songs, Leonard Cohen set out on an international concert tour accompanied by members of the jazz-rock group Passenger; Field Commander Cohen was compiled from recordings of the 1979 tour, and it presents an especially strong argument for Cohen's gifts as a musician. Cohen's voice had gained a great deal of strength and nuance since the dates preserved on 1973's Live Songs, and the smoky rasp that began to scar his vocals on I'm Your Man had yet to set in; this may well be Cohen's best set of recorded performances as a singer, and having Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson on hand as duet partners is especially rich icing on the cake. While the musicians take care to never intrude upon the songs, they play beautifully, with remarkable taste and skill; Passenger bring out the nuances of these songs with a sure but gentle hand (especially bassist Roscoe Beck and Paul Ostermayer on sax and clarinet), and Raffi Hakopian's violin and John Bilezikjian's oud add breathtaking punctuation to these performances (Cohen often cites his musicians after the songs, and it's not hard to imagine a singer being thrilled to work with musicians of this caliber). While it falls short of the stark emotional force of Songs Of Leonard Cohen or Songs Of Love And Hate, Field Commander Cohen makes clear that Cohen writes songs, not literature accompanied by incidental music, and here these twelve songs posses a passionate, aching beauty that's a wonder to behold; this is easily the best Leonard Cohen live recording to emerge to date. -- Mark Deming

March 2001 Germany's PC Magazine - An Album Review Contributor: Niko Solitander Translator: Judith Braun	*** * * * * (out of 6) Excellent!** [T]he recordings are sounding extremely brilliant, very little clapping, no coughing nor bawling interrupt the silent flow of these most beautiful songs and with Jennifer Warnes at the microphone, John Bilezikjian playing mandolin and oud, plus lots of other eminent authorities on accoustical instruments, there has not been commisioned the poorest members of the guild. So who by now still does not own classics like "Lover, Lover, Lover," "So Long, Marianne," "Bird On The Wire," "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye," "The Stranger Song,"...will make a good choice with these up to now unreleased versions. -- Kati Hofacker

March 2001 Germany's Stereoplay - An Album Review Contributor: Adi Heindl Translator: Judith Braun	The poet of Beautiful Losers is a wolf in sheep's clothing. In his silent chansons he always has been sounding out the deepest abyss of the human soul. Likewise he does so on these twelve recordings, which had been taped in England during his 1979 world tour. What Cohen performs in well-known, lethargic, laconic intonations are texts of exquisite beauty, the music holds an intensity which is hard to believe and literally forces one to listen closely. With his nine-member band (outstanding: Raffi Hakopian, violin), Cohen interprets immortal melodies like "Lover Lover Lover" and "Bird On The Wire." -- M. Inhoffen Music: 8 of ten; Sound: 7 of ten; Recording: 8 of ten

March 2001 Germany's Musikexpress - An Album Review Contributor: Bernd Fischer Translator: Judith Braun	*** * * * * (out of 6)** The twelve pieces on Field Commander Cohen hold ready everything the songwriter is hated and worshipped for: simple, unpretentious tunes and poetry, performed with sepulchral voice. "I want to be a journalist who reports about inner landscapes with utmost precision," Cohen once commented on his texts. This sounds old-fashioned, but it is impossible to escape the peculiar thrill of his statical little gems. No "Suzanne" and no "Tower Of Song" are to be found on the album, yet the listener will run into undiscovered treasures as "Memories," which Cohen co-wrote with Phil Spector(!), this is no news but holds tremendous nostalgic appeal...

February 27, 2001 Israel's Yediot Achronot - An Album Review Contributor and Translator: Hacobi and Cobi Nadiv with assistance	The level of lyrics in Western pop music is at it's lowest in the last 40 years. From this backdrop, it's nice and necessary to meet Cohen, the Jewish Canadian poet that never wasted his words. Cohen writes, composes and sings out of a deep commitment that runs beyond the pop scene... [Field Commander Cohen includes some] lovely songs and hits like "So Long, Marianne," "Lover Lover Lover" and "Bird On The Wire." "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" however, achieves the best performance on the album... - Sharon Moldavi

February 27, 2001 Norway's Dagbladet - An Album Review Contributor and Translator: Geoffrey Wren	*** * * * (out of 6)** Here are songs from 1967-79, with Jennifer Warnes adding fine chorale and harmonising. Also worth mentioning is John Bilezikjian's spirited oud playing on "Lover, Lover, Lover," as well as Raffi Hakopian's dramatic violin - yet these musicians never stand in the way of their "Field Commander." This album shows him at his best and most subdued. With his special penetrating, cool voice and poetic songs, Cohen immediately hits the listener's nerve... - Øyvind Rønning

February 25, 2001 Calgary Sun - An Album Review	If you don't drink red wine, you will after listening to this album. Leonard Cohen is cabernet music and this CD...is a heady blend of bohemia. Though capturing Cohen on the tour for that year's Recent Songs album, only a quarter of the 12 songs here are taken from that disc. The remainder are tracks that -- with the exception of "Bird On The Wire," "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" and "So Long, Marianne" -- aren't extremely obvious choices. That is, until you hear them. Backed by the six-piece band Passenger, a violinist and mandolinist, and vocalists Sharon Robinson and Jennifer Warnes...the Canadian bard is at his laidback best here. Not singing, but wooing. Each performance is full-bodied and deliriously intoxicating. From the doo-wop of the Death Of A Ladies' Man track "Memories" ("I walked up to the tallest and the blondest girl. I said, 'Look, you don't know me now but very soon you will; so won't you let me see, won't you let me see, won't you let me see your naked body?" -- only Cohen ...) to the subdued, sombre pseudo-flamenco of "The Gypsy's Wife," Field Commander Cohen is a draining and drained dusk-until-dawn experience. Brought up and dusted off from the Cohen cellar, 1979 was a very good year, indeed. -- Mike Bell

February 23, 2001 Norway's Arbeiderbladet - An Album Review Contributor and Translator: Anne Riise	This live album from England in 1979 is a nice reminder of the warmth and thoughtfulness from many of [Cohen's] best songs - beautiful, sensitive and full of love. Cohen plays many of his best known songs on this album - "So Long, Marianne," "Bird On The Wire," "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" and "Lover Lover Lover" plus eight others. The accompaniment is tasteful - oud, violin and sax plus the ordinary soft rock instruments and most of all the voice of Jennifer Warnes... - Geir Rakvaag

February 23, 2001 UK's Guardian - An Album Review Contributor: Fiona Harrington	*** * * (out of 5)** [Cohen] sounds relaxed and philosophical, backed by a sympathetic band who pluck and massage a variety of Eastern sounding stringed instruments. Though he sings "Bird On a Wire" and "So Long, Marianne," much of the material is from the lesser known reaches of Len's catalogue...

February 20, 2001 PopMatters - An Album Review Contributor: Marie Mazur	...Field Commander Cohen � recorded on the UK leg of his tour for 1979's Recent Songs � is a timely release that offers a more balanced account of his music beyond the popular cliches, underscoring the breadth and depth of Cohen's art, as well as his abilities as a captivating live performer... Although this album documents Cohen's rich talents as a singer-songwriter, more importantly, perhaps, it emphasizes his skill as a performer interacting with other musicians. On this release, Cohen doesn't hog the spotlight and play his songs as a solo artist with a faceless backing group. Rather, the often intricate and multi-faceted arrangements are delivered collaboratively, with an almost theatrical sensibility that owes as much to the performances given by the cast of instrumentalists and backing singers as it does to Cohen's vocal contributions. The material included on Field Commander Cohen dates back to the 1968 debut The Songs of Leonard Cohen, blending classic numbers such as "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" and "So Long, Marianne" with less familiar fare from his '70s albums. Whereas "The Stranger Song" retains the stark beauty of its studio incarnation with Cohen accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, "Bird on the Wire" forfeits some of the sparse simplicity of the original for a more bluesy, electric makeover. The tracks that best capture the collaborative magic of Cohen and his fellow musicians are drawn from his '70s releases. For instance, the slower rendering of "Lover Lover Lover" from New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974) is enhanced by John Bilezikjian's oud. Similarly, the flamenco-flavored "The Gypsy's Wife" and "The Window" from Recent Songs are graced with Raffi Hakopian's beautifully mournful violin. The second of these tracks also offers a perfect example of the graceful interplay of Cohen's vocals with those of singers Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson, itself a signature characteristic of much of the material gathered here. When you listen to the enthusiastic reaction of the crowd � applauding at the start and at the end of tracks � it's hard to believe that this album was recorded in cynical post-punk Britain when Cohen wasn't exactly at the height of his popularity. (That of course had changed by the early '80s when the likes of Nick Cave had begun to declare their debt to him more openly via cover versions, thereby alerting younger listeners to the degree of hip credibility that Cohen had always had.) In the absence of any new material, Field Commander Cohen is a welcome reminder not only of Leonard Cohen's genius as a songwriter but also of his abilities in concert. And as for his storied gloominess, this release bears subtle traces of the kind of knowing self-mockery and irony that have always been present in his work. After all, a man who can refer to himself as "grocer of despair" with a straight face, as Cohen does in the title track, clearly has a sense of humor. - Wilson Neate

February 20, 2001 Eonline - An Album Review Contributor: Jarkko Arjatsalo	B+ [T]hese 12 tracks sound wonderful: crisp, heartfelt and well-played. Better-known Cohen tunes like "Bird On The Wire" and "So Long, Marianne," which were already a decade or so old by the time this was recorded, mix well with more-recently written tunes like "The Window" and "The Smokey Life." Also, Cohen, a much savvier musician than your average dour literate type, put together a terrific band for these gigs, including violin, mandolin and longtime backup singer Jennifer Warnes. Newcomers should start with his best-ofs, but fans should definitely make it their duty to find Tour.

February 20, 2001 Norway's Aftenposten - An Album Review Contributor and Translator: Anne Riise	*** * * * * (out of 6)** Here [Cohen] is at his most tender, thoughtful and sensual. He has very good help from the voices of Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson. John Bilezikjian (oud) and Raffi Hakopian (violin) make a discrete, gypsy-like sound. The rest of the band follows smoothly. This is music with no anger. Even the desperate "Lover Lover Lover" is mild and silky. Most of the songs are from his 1979 album Recent Songs. Only Cohen can be intellectual, sensitive and a "male pig" at the same time. Highlights: "The Gypsy's Wife" and "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye." - Asbjørn Bakke

February 18, 2001 UK's The Mail on Sunday - An Album Review Contributor: Peter Needham	*** * * * (out of 5)** The good news is that...[this live album]...is more than a mere document. "In making this music," Cohen writes in a characteristic sleeve note, "we passed through a number of graceful moments, and I thought they might be worth remembering." The recordings were made - in London and Brighton - back in 1979, but you wouldn't know it from the production values. Cohen sings as well as he ever did, which is not brilliantly but well enough, and he has strong support from some skilled session players and the backing singer Jennifer Warnes, who went on to make an excellent album of his songs on her own (Famous Blue Reincoat, 1986). "Bird On The Wire" is there, and "So Long, Marianne," but the pleasures lie just as much in the lesser-known songs, all of which seem to begin with the definite article: "The Guests," "The Window," and especially "The Smokey Life." Cohen's writing is crisp, clear and poetic, as befits the only man in rock history who was a successful poet and novelist before he went into the studio. "Long ago, we agreed to keep it light," he sings, "so let's be married one more night." -- Tim de Lisle

February 17, 2001 Toronto's Globe & Mail - An Album Review	Time moves slowly in the world of Leonard Cohen, whose songs so often find the intersection between the now of desire and the forever of prophecy. It took 22 years to get this collection to market..., but it doesn't feel the least bit stale. There's a little less gravel in the voice, a bit more Greek in the instrumentals, but it's the same battered wisdom flowing fresh through the dozen songs, recorded with remarkable presence and fidelity during concerts in London. -- Robert Everett-Green

February 17, 2001 Toronto Star - An Album Review Contributor: Bob Parkins	This warm, intimate and splendidly performed document...maintains a robust, gypsy tone. The title track, which starts things off, sounds like a forgotten inspirational number from the Spanish Civil War. Much of the credit goes to violinist Raffi Hakopian, heard to lyrical effect on "The Window" and "The Gypsy Wife," with strong support throughout from John Bilezikjian on mandolin and Cohen's own, Latin-inflected guitar playing. With backing vocals from Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson, Cohen's voice is as rich and creamy as cappuccino. Throw in the shooby-doo of "Memories" and the two-punch finish of "Bird On The Wire" and "So Long, Marianne" and you arrive at the end of 63 minutes wishing it was only the intermission. -- Vit Wagner

February 16, 2001 Denmark's Ekstra Bladet - An Album Review Contributor: Johannes Ibdal	[Cohen] once more demonstrates the timeless effect of his original combination of soul-deep wit and a humour almost as dark as his voice... -- Thomas Treo

February 9, 2001 UK's The Express - An Album Review Contributor: Jarkko Arjatsalo	*** * * *** (Uncommonly good) There's always been more to Cohen than the easy "King of Misery" label would let you believe. Songs of romance and love, of sadness and life, all sung in that deep, velvet, lifeworn voice. This live album, recorded in 1979, captures the majesty of the man beautifully and even for people who don't like live albums (people like me) it works just fine.

February 2001
MOJO -
An Album Review
Contributor: Niko Solitander

[T]hese tracks stay more faithful to their originals and represent a broad cross-section of his less familiar repertoire... The album's middle tracks, notably "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye," manage to highlight the soft interplay between Cohen and Jennifer Warnes' voices... -- Daphne Carr

February 2001
Q4Music -
An Album Review
Contributor: Big Al

[T]he material is drawn mainly from that year's [1979's] Recent Songs and '74's New Skin For The Old Ceremony, though there's also room for "Bird On The Wire", "Stranger Song" and "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye." Instrumentally it's surprisingly varied with violins and sax solos, but the music knows its place and stays firmly in step behind Cohen's meditative delivery... -- Rob Beattie

November 14, 2000
Columbia Records' Daily Dish

Columbia Records announces the revised release dates for Field Commander Cohen: Tour Of 1979: February 19, 2001 in Europe and February 20, 2001 in North America.

September 25, 2000
Toronto's Globe and Mail
Contributor: Judith Fitzgerald

Kelley Lynch, Leonard's manager extraordinaire, announces to journalist Judith Fitzgerald at Toronto's Globe and Mail, that Leonard has "mostly been in the studio working; and, although the new project's still on the front burner, he decided a while back he wanted to do a concert CD from the 1979 European tour. He really enjoyed himself on that tour; the band...as well as the backup...were phenomenal; and, his mojo was working. So, guess what? It's in the can." Field Commander Cohen: Tour Of 1979 will be released the third week of November. The tracks were recorded at Brighton and Hammersmith Odeon.