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Sep 21, 2016 Leonard Cohen By Christopher Roberts

Leonard Cohen is releasing a new album, You Want It Darker, this fall via Sony. Now the release date has been confirmed as October 21. Back when the album was announced in August no music from it was shared, but now we have the title track, “You Want It Darker.” The song premieres on an important day: today is Cohen’s 82nd birthday (happy birthday Leonard!). Listen to Cohen in all his raspy voiced glory below.

A press release says that the song “delves into an unflinching exploration of the religious mind.” It also explains that “Cohen created this hypnotic groove with the addition of Montreal’s Cantor Gideon Zelermyer and the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Choir, whose voices invoke a sound from Cohen’s youth.”

The album is the follow-up to 2014 album Popular Problems. You Want It Darker is Cohen’s 14th album and was produced by his son, Adam Cohen.

A new tracklist for the album has also been shared, one that describes each song in more detail and includes some of the lyrics from each song. That is below too.

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You Want It Darker Tracklist:

1. “You Want It Darker”
Hypnotic groove. The surprise of a great synagogue choir. An unflinching exploration of the religious mind.

“Didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim.”

2. “Treaty”
One of Cohen’s signature melodies. A confession of the selfishness of love and the hope of a correction.

“Only one of us was real-and that was me.”

3. “On the Level”
An old man’s take on desire.

“I was fighting with temptation, but I didn’t want to win”

4. “Leaving the Table”
A slow, relentless, and somehow joyous ballad of letting it all go by. A guitar solo you will remember.

“I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game.”

5. “If I Didn’t Have Your Love”
A classic Cohen love song: the deep gratitude felt by one heart opening to another.

“That’s how broken it would be,
what the world would seem to me,
if I didn’t have your love to make it real.”

6. “Traveling Light”
A seeker hits the road and finds the joys of solitude.

“I’m traveling light
It’s au revoir
My once so bright
My fallen star”

7. “It Seemed the Better Way”
The feeling of a prayer that’s been there forever, but the spiritual comforts of the past no longer available.

“Lift this glass of blood, try to say the grace.”

8. “Steer Your Way”
A song of courage as the heart moves into the darkness.

“Steer your heart past the pain that is far more real than you.”

9. “String Reprise/Treaty”
A brilliant reimagining of “Treaty” as a string quartet; a truly glorious moment ending with a few words from Leonard himself.

“I wish there was a treaty we could sign.”