Review: Leonard Cohen 'A Day On The Green' Coldstream 24/01/09

(Photo by Simone Maynard.)

Michelle Griffin
'The Sunday Age'

January 25, 2009

Leonard Cohen
Day On The Green
Rochford Winery, Coldstream

LEONARD Cohen is like a horse whisperer, only for women. Even at 74, the dapper rogue could provoke sighs from women in the audience at Rochford Winery last night with his courtly songs of sex and regret. When he growled his sleazy 1988 classic I'm Your Man, women leapt from their picnic blankets to yell: "Yes, you are!"
At his first Australian concert in 24 years, Cohen seduced 7000 people — women and men — with an act polished by a year's touring and a lifetime perfecting his pitch: he charmed us, he moved us, and then he broke it to us gently. "I tried to leave you," he sang at his third and final encore.
Cohen is a funny man. The jokes may be bleak but he tells them with a rueful smile. "It's been a long time, about 15 years since I was on stage," he told the crowd. "When I was 60, a young kid with a crazy dream."
He may look frail, but Cohen put paid to his morose reputation with a vibrant set that lasted almost three hours. He certainly didn't perform like a man forced out of retirement to sing for his pension fund. Dressed like a preacher in three-piece suit, string tie and fedora, he literally skipped on and off stage between sets, swung tight-fisted like Sinatra during musical interludes, and performed a "white man dance" to whooping applause.
Cohen's baritone is, as he cheerfully admits, a rough diamond. His martini-dry vocals are complemented by a nine-piece band of accomplished musicians and singers, led by his long-time musical director, bassist Roscoe Beck. Folk classics Suzanne and Chelsea Hotel #2 were presented simply, but many highlights came from more recent songs, such as the witty Everybody Knows, soaring Anthem and wry calling card Tower of Song (featuring Cohen's one-handed synthesiser solo!)
Hallelujah came halfway through the second set. Cohen fell to his knees to wrest his best-known song back from all the artists who have covered it — Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, UK Idol's Alexandra Burke — and rediscovered its wild, black heart. Later, Cohen ceded control of lovely hymn If It Be Your Will to the angelic voices of the Webb sisters. Then he roared back into focus with the song of the night, a rocking and timely rendition of his 1992 number Democracy Is Coming to the USA.


A Thousand Kisses Deep
('A Day On The Green' - Coldstream 24th January 2009)

Bonus:
From the last time Leonard Cohen played in Melbourne nearly 25 years ago, I give you a 'new' song 'Hallelujah' as well as 'Democracy' live in Glasgow on the night Obama was elected.