Product Description

VARIOUS POSITIONS proved to be a transitional album for Cohen, poised halfway between the classic balladic style of RECENT SONGS and the cool electronic backing of I'M YOUR MAN. It was certainly Cohen's slickest production to date, though it seems practically spartan compared to later recordings. The slinky, European feel of the minor-key romantic plea "Dance Me to the End of Love" is Cohen at his most sensual and persuasive. "The Captain"'s shifting perspective navigates a conversation between two characters musing on the personal cost of war. Most significantly, new vistas in Cohen's work are opened up by "Hallelujah" (a highlight of Jeff Buckley's debut album nearly a decade later) and "If It Be Your Will".These two songs present themselves as musical prayers, and their fragile spirituality is a refreshing, largely unprecedented development in Cohen's dark artistic legacy.

Track Listing

1. Dance Me To The End Of Love
2. Coming Back To You
3. Law
4. Night Comes On
5. Hallelujah
6. Captain
7. Hunter's Lullaby
8. Heart With No Companion
9. If It Be Your Will

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #275 in Music
• Released on: 1989-11-01
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Various Positions was Leonard Cohen's first album of the 1980s, yet was in keeping with the rest of his albums in two important respects: one, it sounded absolutely nothing like anything else anyone else was doing; two, it was a compelling reason for anyone else dealing in songs of love and its loss to wonder why they were bothering. As a lyricist, Cohen has few, if any, peers--he has never been the relentless doom-monger of popular myth, but a wise, warm and frequently very funny chronicler of heartbreak. Cohen, like very few others, has always appreciated that love is at least as much comedy as tragedy. Various Positions contains some of Cohen's best--"Dance Me To The End Of Love", "Coming Back To You" and a shortened, accusatory version of "Hallelujah", later covered to such majestic effect by Jeff Buckley. It also contains the bizarre country epic "The Captain", in which Cohen plays the part of a young officer being handed command of his unit by his dying superior. All are sung in Cohen's trademark husky drone and all are the work of a writer who, here as always, uses language like Vincent used paint. --Andrew Mueller

Customer Reviews

leonard cohen the legend!!
this album is fab hallialuah made me buy it but the whole album is fab buy it the story about hallialuah on radio2 thats how i got to hear of him he deserves much more regonition why hasant he? bob dylan does and i think leonard cohen is much better and his voice is better too!! alson get songs of leonard cohen from the 60s and songs of love and hate!! buy them you wont regret it ive also just recieved richard hawleys ladys bridge album fabalous too!!

TIMELESS
A great CD and well worth the 4 pounds I spent on it, after seeking high and low in every store here in Germany for it. It was the only CD missing in my Leonard Cohen collection and I regret not having gotten it earlier. Together with Jennifer Warnes and a fairly minimal orchestration Cohen proves once again he doesn't need a WALL OF SOUND to make a great CD.

The Other Side Of Sorrow And Despair
Cohen made three classic albums with John Lissaeur at the helm: 1974's New Skin For The Old Ceremony, 1979's Recent Songs, but at the apex of these achievements stands 1984's Various Positions, in that it paved the way for a new audience to discover Leonard Cohen afresh. This wasn't done by just adding the odd synthesised drone here and there, for there is the same continuity of themes and musical genres threaded consistently through the works (compare New Skin's 'Why Don't You Try?' or 'I Tried To Leave You' alongside Recent Songs' 'Came So Far For Beauty' or 'The Smokey Life', i.e., and you'll find they sit naturally next to tracks like 'Hallelujah' or 'Coming Back To You', whereas 'Night Comes On' and 'If It Be Your Will' would not have sounded out of place on Songs From A Room). What appears so much different about Various Positions is more to do with Cohen as an artist: he sounds rejuvenated and almost ready to make that protean leap towards making that one true classic that would positively redefine him for generations to come. I refer, of course, to I'm Your Man. I was recently tickled to read of a conversation around this time between Leonard and Bob Dylan, where Leonard asked Bob how long it took him to write 'I And I' from the album Infidels. "About ten minutes," was the forthright reply Bob gave. "How long did it take you to write 'Hallelujah'?" "Three or four years," deadpanned Cohen, later explaining: "it really took about five years, but I didn't want to look like I was dragging my heels or anything." The point being: you can appreciate the precision and care that Cohen took in recording certain tracks on Various Positions. 'Hallelujah', apparently, was whittled down from dozens of seperate verses, all presumably containing a unique rhyme such as 'do ya', 'overthrew ya', 'fool ya' (you get the picture), just as similarly 'Democracy' from The Future was whittled down from hundreds of different verses. This is craft of a higher order.
Elsewhere, we are treated to such gems as Dance Me To The End Of Love, one of those definitive mission statements that Cohen seems to throw out effortlessly, even though we know this can't possibly be the case. 'Coming Back To You' returns to Leonard's country roots with classic ambiguous imagery: is it literal, or devotional, or both? 'The Law' has a slight reggae lilt, and 'Night Comes On' is a masterpiece of darkness and shade. Side Two of the original kicks off with the masterful 'Hallelujah' and ends with the anthemic and positively hymnal 'If It Be Your Will', taking in faux-country ('The Captain'), dark nursery-rhyme ('Hunter's Lullaby'), and the celebratory 'Heart With No Companion' along the way. The whole proceedings presaged a huge seismic shift in the perception of Leonard Cohen as some doom-laden troubadour. Had he not gone on to record the collossal I'm Your Man, I feel many would have regarded this as his best by a long chalk since the first album. As it stands, Various Positions, remains Leonard's transitional masterpiece, and you can do lots worse than shell-out a fiver or less to have this in your collection.