New Leonard Cohen Album Expected Next Year
Leonard Cohen’s son Adam said a posthumous album of his father’s music was under production with a target release date sometime in 2019.
The pair worked together on 2016’s You Want it Darker, with Adam acting as producer. The album was released 19 days before Leonard’s death at the age of 82.
“I was tasked with finishing a few more songs of his that we started together on the last album, so his voice is literally still in my life,” Adam told CBC in a new interview that will be aired on Oct. 1. “It's a bizarre and delicious entanglement. ... To make a long story short, I believe that there are some really beautiful new songs of Leonard Cohen that no one's heard that are at some point going to come out."
The poetical readings, designed to be set to music, were recorded during the You Want It Darker sessions. “I would implore him, even though I knew he was in a delicate state, I'd say, 'Dad, just read this, just read this poem to a metronome and we'll look at it later,’” Adam said. “Some of my favorite poems of his are actually in the vault and I was tasked with finishing them."
He described the unheard material as significantly different from the the previous LP, which saw Leonard contemplating death. “Unlike the the gravity and the nature of You Want it Darker, these have a sort of more mytho-romantic [tone] that resembles his older work, something more romantic. So that's also more surprising.
"How wonderful that these songs exist, that I'm going to bring them and see them to completion, not just for me because I'm part of the family business, but for all the people out there who are going to hopefully delight in hearing his language, that inimitable contribution of his. You know, there are these songs that exist that he wanted finished, these incredible powerful readings that were set to music. … It's going to surprise and delight.”
Meanwhile, a new collection of Leonard Cohen’s poetry, The Flame, will be published on Oct. 2.