These days, Leonard Cohen – who turned a gruff 77 last September – doesn’t sing so much as narrate. On Old Ideas, Cohen’s 12th record in 44 years, his voice is almost unbearably rich – quit-smoking deep, heavy lidded, and near hypnotic in its weariness. Cohen’s always been a commanding performer, but there’s something particularly indisputable about his presence here: It’s as if important secrets are calmly being imparted, as if we’re getting handed a map for navigating love, sorrow, and all the wild nuances in between. Who wouldn’t listen, and closely?

Opener “Going Home” (which was first published as a poem in The New Yorker) sees Cohen taking metaphysical stock over a yawning little string melody that, on its own, would be heartbreaking enough. Confiding secrets in the third person, Cohen (it’s possible, of course, that he’s talking about some other Leonard, a different sportsman and shepherd, another “lazy bastard living in a suit”) delivers a series of devastating zingers, skewering the creeping sense of phoniness that haunts anyone who’s ever accomplished anything. “He will speak these words of wisdom/ Like a sage, a man of vision/ Though he knows he’s really nothing/ But the brief elaboration of a tube,”… read more »