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Wilfred Langmaid
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Live CD and DVD | They are from the tour that started in Fredericton a year ago

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Ray Bourgeois

A year ago: Leonard Cohen, poet, novelist and songwriter performed to a sold out audience at The Playhouse on May 15, 2008. It was his first concert in more than 15 years.

Leonard Cohen: Live In London - Sony Music

It was just over one year ago - May 11, 2008 - that Leonard Cohen began his first tour in a decade and a half right here in Fredericton. That show was a triumph, and it was a harbinger of a world tour that is still going strong and getting rave reviews across the board.

The tour now has a beautiful document for posterity - a release of a show last summer in London available either in two-CD or one-DVD format.

We saw the template here in Fredericton - 20 songs - and this set follows the same structure in a slightly fleshed out 25-song set from July 17.

Both shows revealed the same thing. There is no one like Cohen and, sad though it is to say, it is our good fortune that he got fleeced out of his savings by his former manager earlier this decade. Coming out of retirement with an ace band, he skitters with unique grace across his career.

The Live In London concert is heavy on his material from three consecutive albums -1984's Various Positions, 1988's I'm Your Man, and 1992's The Future. It is fleshed out with career-launching tracks from the 1960s and a sprinkling of songs from his four albums of the 1970s and from his 2001 album Ten New Songs.

The energy and strength of Cohen was really the Fredericton concert's most pleasant surprise. He was in fine voice all night long, and his enthusiasm never flagged. That has been the hallmark of the entire tour, and it can be just as emphatically stated for the Live In London document.

His reputation for dour joylessness is, meanwhile, eschewed with his charming and witty between-song banter, and by the way he carries himself visually on the DVD.

Roscoe Beck (bass and vocals, music director), Neil Larsen (keyboard, accordion, brass instruments), Bob Metzger (guitar, steel guitar, vocals), Javier Mas (acoustic guitar, oud and string instruments), Rafael Gayol (drums and percussion) and Dino Soldo (keyboard, saxophone, wind instruments, vocals) are all master musicians who deliver nary a wasted note.

Mas, Larsen, and Beck are the bedrock musicians in the team. Mas' skills with banduria, laud, archilaud, and 12-string guitar are intense beyond description, most notably on a late first set version of 1974's Who By Fire and an early second set version of 1979's The Gypsy's Wife.

Beck's arrangements are sometimes jarringly inventive - such as the move of So Long Marianne from his 1967 debut album Songs Of Leonard Cohen from 3/4 time to a 4/4 with some cadence shifts - but everything works like a charm.

Meanwhile, the Hammond B3 work of Larsen on some songs is both key and a welcome lift to the synth heavy template of Cohen's post 70s studio work presented live. There are lots of examples, but Anthem from The Future and the now ubiquitous Hallelujah from Various Positions particularly stand out.

Of the three backing vocalists, the shining star is Sharon Robinson. She has sung with him off and on through the years, and was co-credited with him on Ten New Songs.

Live In London is a perfect document of a triumphant reunion - and a great memory bringer to those of who were part of that blessed throng here at The Playhouse just one year ago.

Fredericton-based freelance writer Wilfred Langmaid has reviewed albums in The Daily Gleaner since 1981, and is a past judge for both the Junos and the East Coast Music Awards. His column appears each Saturday.