Leonard Cohen: Recent Songs (1979)

I think Recent Songs is an under-appreciated Leonard Cohen album. It contains some of my favourite Cohen songs, like The Window, The Guests, The Gypsy's Wife, The Smokey Life, and The Traitor, which I would rank as one of Cohen's finest compositions.

Of all of the reviews and comments that I have read, I appreciate this from Stephen Scobie the most:

"...perhaps the most concise statement he has ever made of his central vision occurs in the last verse of his song "The Window," from Recent Songs:

Then lay your rose on the fire

The fire give up to the sun

The sun give over to splendour

In the arms of the High Holy One

For the Holy One dreams of a letter

Dreams of a letter's death

Oh bless the continuous stutter

Of the word being made into flesh

Only Leonard Cohen could conceive of the process of the Word being made Flesh as a stutter - and only Cohen could bless that insight." [source]

I can't remember when I bought my copy, as usual.