Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” Is Ecclesiastes For Modern Times

The late, great Leonard Cohen spent a lifetime in the shadows, yearning for the light in song and verse. It is therefore fitting that what he himself identified as his final album is entitled, “You Want It Darker.” The album title seems to refer both to Cohen’s fans, and to the Lord to whom he addresses most of its songs. Living in a world in which God seems to allow endless suffering, and in which his distinctive brand of introspective melancholia has consoled generations of fans, Cohen is well aware of the part he plays.

Abandoning the themes of love and lust that dominated the early part of his career — “The wretched beast is tame,” he comments in one song — Cohen turns his attention to mortality, organized religion, and the inevitable curtain call that awaits each of us. Snatches of melody and scraps of phrase echo some of his earlier work, but the album stands very much on its own, as a new and cohesive musical and philosophical statement.

Although I call it, “new,” much of “You Want It Darker” reminded me of the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes, which this album seems to echo. As that text famously observed, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Like the unnamed preacher who authored Ecclesiastes (widely thought to be King Solomon the wise), Cohen has tasted everything the world has to offer — from…