| Artist: | Track: | Rating: | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Don Henley | Everybody Knows | | | ||
| 2. Trisha Yearwood | Coming Back To You | | | ||
| 3. Sting & The Chieftains | Sisters Of Mercy | | | | |
| 4. Bono | Hallelujah | | | | |
| 5. Tori Amos | Famous Blue Raincoat | | | | |
| 6. Aaron Neville | Ain't No Cure For Love | | | ||
| 7. Willie Nelson | Bird On A Wire | | | | |
| 8. Peter Gabriel | Suzanne | | | | |
| 9.Billy Joel | Light As The Breeze | | | | |
| 10.Jann Arden | If It Be Your Will | | | | |
| 11.Suzanne Vega | Story Of Isaac | | | | |
| 12.Martin L. Gore | Coming Back To You | | | | |
About two months ago, a friend suggested that I should hear this album. Were I a more petty individual, I might still be shunning this person.
Tower Of Song is yet another Leonard Cohen tribute album. After Jennifer Warnes's Famous Blue Raincoat (see the Tentative Reviews website for my comments) and I'm Your Fan, one might well think that the entire idea had reached its saturation point. Listening to this album confirms this.
This is not a good tribute album. Many of Cohen's songs are reduced to formulaic schlock, manufactured by bland pop-icons in what effectively amounts to a parade of egos. And even the songs that one would expect to be fairly good, with one exception, fail to transcend levels of mere adequacy -- they aren't necessarily terrible, but there's really no reason for them to have been made in the first place. Besides which, most of the songs here sound more than a bit under-rehearsed, as though all of the artists involved were operating under repressive time constraints. Then again, maybe they just wanted to get it all over with as soon as possible.
The All-Music Guide describes this album as a "train-wreck", utterly failing to capture the essence of Cohen's songs -- that is, the artists simply filter the music through their own formulae, never bothering to make the songs their own. This criticism is valid. And with Don Henley, Elton John and Bono among the leading contributors, it shouldn't be terribly surprising.
The album begins in one of the worst ways possible, with Don Henley warbling through a bastardized version of "Everybody Knows" (made even worse by the fact that Concrete Blonde did a decent cover of this song on Pump Up The Volume). Oversinging, over-arranging, unnecessary backup singers, vocal cracks, insipid keyboard backing -- it's all here, folks, and it all gives a lot of credence to Mojo Nixon's analysis of Henley's continued place in the music industry [do I have to explain what this means?]. Besides which, it drags on for too long.
Then there's the rudimentary country version of "Coming Back To You" -- which, as I've previously mentioned, is not exactly Cohen's best number to begin with -- performed by an uninspired Trisha Yearwood. This is New Country/Lite-FM drivel at its most average ... which is to say, its worst. The best that I can say of this number is that it at least preserves the form of the song from beginning to end, even if the content is mangled. 0 for 2, so far.
As might be expected, the version of "Sisters Of Mercy" by Sting & The Chieftains is a bit better ... though still not as good as it might have been. The Uilleann pipes and whistles fit the mood of the song fairly well (the 10 second instrumental bit is inspiring, if taken on its own), and Sting goes through the motions of the song in a decent enough manner (though his accent on the "green as a stone" line is downright awful). I suppose this is decent fair for those who were wondering how to arrange the song for Irish pub-crawls, but a bit less so for the rest of us. It's still a good enough track, but nothing to warrant hitting the "repeat" button on one's CD player.
What can I say about Bono's version of "Hallelujah"? Perhaps I can start by noting that the backing is reduced to a rather basic electronic setting, which isn't changed terribly much through the course of the song (the background trumpet sample is a nice touch, though). Bono groans and whispers in the verses, saving his yelping for the choruses. It's an average performance in general, and a rather dismal manner of adapting Cohen's material. The only real question is ... would this have sounded better in the hands of the Bono of 1984?
Tori Amos's "Famous Blue Raincoat" is a real letdown. This is one of Cohen's best songs -- possibly the highpoint of his career -- and is of such profound psychological intensity that anything less than a really well-planned performance is bound to be disappointing. Jennifer Warnes managed to turn out a version of this song which came close to equaling Cohen's original. One might think that if Warnes could handle it, Amos could do it with ease ... but this isn't quite the case. Instead, its basically just a functional run-through -- the skeleton of the piece is still there, but anything which made the original special seems to have been removed (and her emotings on the last verse are highly inappropriate). Indicative of Amos's transient role as an interpreter of this song is her decision to keep the "Sincerely, L. Cohen" line at the end of the track -- she doesn't even attempt to approach the piece from a new perspective.
It's funny how Aaron Neville has been transformed from a respected pop legend to a laughingstock in the last decade, isn't it? A few years ago, when Neville was asked why he frequently loaned his gifted voice to less-than-stellar projects, his response was, "Well, I have to eat". This basically summarizes this version of "Ain't No Cure For Love" (again, not one of Cohen's best), here reduced to a honky-tonk shuffle number suitable for Country-FM ... I suppose that it's successful enough as the form goes, but this doesn't really make much of a difference.
If the Neville track at least has the interesting element of a decent voice in chains, the same cannot be said of Elton John's "I'm Your Man". This is utterly worthless, a completely streamlined version of the hit for the dullest of radio-fodder formats. It's sad to think that John had discernible talent once. Oh well.
It's funny how Willie Nelson has been transformed from laughingstock to respected musical elder in the last decade, isn't it? And his version of "Bird On A Wire" is actually fairly decent, if rather predictable and not quite good enough to write home about. Nelson's famous twang actually fits the song well, even if it doesn't really add very much to it. Moreover, the guitar picking at the end is actually fairly good. Has Nelson actually become respectable these days?
Peter Gabriel's "Suzanne" is another disappointment -- another track that glimmers slightly when it should proudly shine outward. Gabriel's emotive voice does actually contribute something to the song, but this still sounds like a half-finished demo (and, knowing the speed at which Gabriel usually works, it probably was). The lead-in is similar to "Come Talk To Me", and the subsequent developments seem rather unfocused -- some have accused Gabriel of over-producing certain tracks ["Kiss That Frog", anyone?], but there seems to be a danger in under-producing as well. The guitar features on the outro are ... very David Rhodesian.
Amid such disappointments, one pleasant surprise is that Billy Joel's track actually isn't so bad. "Light As The Breeze" is a fairly recent Cohen number, having been featured on The Future (1992) -- a combination of sexuality and religious offering that seems rather evocative even by Cohen's usual terms. Joel, in his version, gives the horn section a prominent role and adds an uncharacteristic level of soul to his own voice -- even though I'm not personally that big of a fan of this type of music, I have to admit that he did it well enough. Which still isn't to say that it's stellar, or anything.
Jann Arden's "If It Be Your Will" can be seen as a cash-in on her One Really Big Hit, dealing as it does with a slightly cynical outlook on Christian expansion (from early devotion to subsequent bureaucracy and militarism). The tone is vaguely country, vaguely Celtic. It's not painful to listen to, but it doesn't merit an extended overview.
How surprised should I be that Suzanne Vega ends up providing the only clear success on the album? Perhaps her origins in pure folk stylings allowed her to work with the story of the track in ways that other artists on this project couldn't dream of -- the tale of Abraham and Isaac is fairly well covered here, with the defiance of the final lines being transmitted via a vocal strength based on articulation instead of brute force. The percussive backing for most of the song is a nice touch as well, and the electric guitar texturing doesn't upset the balance of the song. Perhaps I've been undervaluing Vega ... if she can come out of this project with her dignity intact, there must be some considerable talent there. But having said that ...
... I still can't help but think that, of all of the "stars" on this release, Martin L. Gore was the only one who really "got" the intention of the album, and at the same time wasn't afraid to flaunt his knowledge. Unlike the other artists, he plays up the absurdly exploitive elements of the project for all they're worth. Covering a track which has already made an appearance on the album, his unique brand of deadpan electro- country is damned funny, and suggests that he was perfectly aware of what was expected of him in the project. Some electronic weirdness at the end underscores Gore's detachment from the whole thing.
The album ends on a much higher note than that on which it began, but there isn't even of interest in between to recommend this release. If a Cohen tribute is what you want, Famous Blue Raincoat is substantially better (and, while I don't actually own I'm Your Fan, I can't imagine that it would be any worse).
(review originally posted to alt.music.yes on 18 Jun 1998)