50 Years of Leonard Cohen’s :: “New Skin for the Old Ceremony”
Photo: Michael Putland
A melodic masterpiece that tells of passing trains riddled with tender temptation, revolutionary romances, and poetic perfection, “New Skin for the Old Ceremony” eagerly manifests both the esoteric and atmospheric aroma of the late Leonard Cohen’s gasping genius in a way that stands solely on its own in comparison to his past works. Fluent in the cosmic connection to flesh and articulate in its dynamical demure, Cohen’s holy breath against the double-sided mirror of life and ultimate death sincerely reflect this radical renaissance across the album’s stellar storytelling on political poetics and harmonious hormones, all simultaneously splashing against the forbidden walls of time and space. With its revolution in reverse and sonically sensitive structure, Cohen exotically explores the Dionysian atmosphere of his community and religion with a professional prophetic isolation like that of the ancient greats before him. Burning under medieval stars and callused clouds, whose volumes of vapors expand and contract without so much as a whimper, “New Skin for the Old Ceremony” echos through our skulls like some gorgeous gospel sung by ageless angels with various throats of tonal mastery.
“In terms of the actual musical style of the record, a great deal of it is due to John Lissauer. He’s a very young man, and certainly the most interesting musical mind that I’ve come across in many years.”
Photo: John Rowlands
Recorded in the winter of 1974 and released towards the end of summer, Cohen and producer John Lissauer, while working at Sound Ideas Studio in New York, set out to depict the tenderly troubled narrative of some of the songwriter’s universal connections to the ultimate freedoms and prolific pain in the human condition. Speaking of pain, Cohen had his wisdom teeth removed around the time of the album’s conception, though this would be considered extremely irrelevant compared to the smooth shadowing cast by the album, it plays quite a unique detail between the blissful bookends that safely secures the captivating contents with a warm and worldly embrace. Songs such as “Chelsea Hotel #2” explore his raw encounter with Janis Joplin in the late 1960s before her untimely death, which he later went on record admitting that it was "an indiscretion for which I'm very sorry, and if there is some way of apologizing to the ghost, I want to apologize now, for having committed that indiscretion,” the harmonious home-run “Who By Fire,” the album’s remarkably beautiful and often comical, opener “Is This What You Wanted” and “Lover, Lover, Lover” all setting in stone the most sincere confession of one’s soul since that of Kerouac and his cosmic cries of despair into the void of nothingness.
Joined by an all-star cast of musicians such as vocalist Janis Ian, Erin Dickins, Gail Kantor, Emily Bindigerm Ralph Gibson, Roy Markowitz, and many others whose rhythmic portrayals of enduring expression help capitalize on the soft teachings of the human spirit and its ultimately rich history in the arts. Bearing everything just as he’s done in the past with previous works, Cohen’s temptations into the poetic paralysis of love and death are vastly divine and like nothing else before or after its time. Felt from virtually any distance, his 4th masterpiece stirs the oscillating oceans with bewilderment and orchestra production, and while this is something that remains familiar with Cohen’s work throughout the entirety of his career, he never shied away from the ghostly sincerity of voice and instrument even in the end.
