Anyone heard Cohen's new lp? I love it, his best since VP.

i'm gonna give this a listen there: http://www.espace.mu/cohen

Better than I'm Your Man, The Future, and Ten New Songs? High praise, dude.

I've only heard 3-4 songs, so far it sounds like a big improvement over Dear Heather but nowhere near top-shelf Cohen.

I think it is miles better than Ten New Songs and The Future. I'm Your Man is great, but it feels like he was older than he was, that sounds dumb, I know, whereas Old Ideas sounds modern, yet very similar in spots to 60s Cohen to me. If any of that made sense.

I'm kinda lost

After a full listen I maintain that this is crazy talk. There's nothing here as starkly gripping as "Everybody Knows" or "The Future" or "Democracy," nothing as majestically poignant as "Anthem" or "Alexandra Leaving" or "In My Secret Life." All the songs seem to follow a similar fill-in-the-blank template that gets old fast--"Show me the place where...x, Show me the place where....y," and one of these songs goes on like this for at least 8 minutes. It's not bad, but Cohen's upper tier is beyond reproach--"not bad" just doesn't cut it with this guy.

the backing vocals on Different Sides are sexy

"Alexandra Leaving" is so good. Hey, why haven't you updated your blog in over a month?

Other writing projects. I'm about 75-80% (I'm guessing) finished with a book of essays I've been working on for the past year and a half or so, and every time I sit down to write I find myself gravitating towards that. I feel like I'm nearing that home stretch period with it, and I'm really eager to get it all pieced together. I'll try to get something up on there before too long; I have a couple half-written posts saved as drafts that I've been meaning to finish.

Thanks for caring, though.