Leonard Cohen: Songs of Love and Hate (1971)

Now if you can manage to get
your trembling fingers to behave,
why don't you try unwrapping
a stainless steel razor blade?
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down? 

Everything about this record is depressing, even the jacket, with an unshaven Cohen oddly smiling from out of the blackness. It looks a bit sinister. I own a CD bootleg of Leonard Cohen's performance at the Beeb from 1968, before this record was released. He says, in his introduction to Dress Rehearsal Rag, that he only sings this song when he is sure that the landscape can support the despair he is about to project into it. I am paraphrasing, of course, but I think I am close to the original quote. The album is depressing at times, yet uplifting at others. The children's chorus that comes in in the final moments of Last Year's Man is very moving. For me, the best songs are Famous Blue Raincoat and Joan of Arc, later covered by Jennifer Warnes.