First We Take Etobicoke · 3 January 2002
After recent mention of a certain bafflement at this country’s lasting and seemingly unimpeachable regard for Serge Gainsbourg, I was brought to consider Gainsbourg’s licensed Canadian subsidiary, Leonard Cohen (described once by someone, possibly me, as that country’s most down-tempo geriatric white rapper), and just what it is about the demi-Buddhist that gives me such a case of ass.
Part of it, surely, comes from repeated exposure to archetypal Leonard Cohen fans: the sort of fuzzy-headed liberal Torontonian (in spirit if not geography) whose affection for rich imagery and hippie intensity leads to strange enthusiasms, like, say, a belief that Michael Ondaatje’s treacly linguistic wanderings constitute “beautiful prose,” or that Joni Mitchell is an accomplished musician and a great poet.
But mainly it’s the music. Some of the early songs are fine enough, but listening just now to a “greatest hits” collection of recent years, I realize it’s the John Tesh calculatedness of it, the air-conditioned precision of the sampled drums and humbucked Strats, the yeah, man that’s sweet of the producer behind the console, as the session man nails it on the second take. It’s Muzak for the soy latté set.
Of course it wouldn’t work if the lacquered references to bohemianism and anal sex were engineered by Steve Albini or Black Francis. Probably be worse. But damn.
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