Album Of The Week: Leonard Cohen Old Ideas

The story goes like this: Just a couple of years ago, Leonard Cohen was a septuagenarian retiree, more or less done with music, living in a Buddhist monastery in California. He stopped touring in 1993, and his last studio album, Dear Heather, came out in 2004. Cohen had done plenty in his life, releasing at least four albums that are in the dorm-room canon for anyone getting serious about loving music and, along with Serge Gainsbourg, defining a sophisticated-sensualist persona that's become one of rock's great archetypes. He'd more than earned the chance to spend the rest of his life in quiet meditation. But while he was living in that monastery, a former manager made off with all of his money, and he had to return to the road in 2009 in order to remain financially solvent. The people who saw those shows said rapturous things about them. Eventually, a court awarded Cohen $9.5 million, and I don't know if he's collected yet. But either way, he's suddenly returned to the business of making music. And so maybe we have that crooked manager to thank for the existence of Old Ideas, Cohen's lovely, elegiac sprawl of a new album.