Phew, I’m not sure I like Leonard Cohen with that 80s synth sound. But in the eighties, the plucked acoustic guitar was (supposedly) out of fashion and Leonard Cohen wanted to sound modern. Or perhaps his record label, his producer or the people around him persuaded him to go for a ‘contemporary’ sound. Ironically, “I’m Your Man”, with its treble-heavy, 80s plastic aesthetic, sounds far more dated and old-fashioned than his timeless albums from the 1960s and 1970s. The songs – which are really just beautifully written poems recited by Cohen in his deep baritone – are no worse than before, but the sound is almost unbearable today. In my view, this is one of his weakest albums, simply because it has absolutely nothing to offer musically. Why it ended up in the ‘1001 Albums’ list is a mystery known only to the compilers themselves. For me, this is one of many lapses in taste from an era when the ‘old’ acts were desperate to sound new. It’s a shame about the lovely songs. And thank goodness there are live recordings of the most important tracks, which don’t sound quite so clinical.
