8/30/2023 0 Comments Spike cohen mixtape![]() “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On” may well be the funkiest thing either Spector or Cohen ever produced. ![]() It’s a strange aesthetic choice, particularly given its complete and total absence on the subsequent track, “Paper Thin Hotel.” The drums alone are an auditory crime, though a hallmark of Spector’s scant few ‘70s productions (see also Dion’s grossly overlooked, Spector-produced Born to Be with You) that threaten to throw the whole of the track out of whack, rhythmically, with their disorienting delay. Where “True Love” produced a dizzying effect through instrumentation alone, “Iodine” attempts to replicate this byproduct through artificial means, thus lessening its overall impact. Woozy, perhaps, would be a better way of putting the resulting effect of listening to “True Love Leaves No Traces”.Ĭonversely, “Iodine” tends to suffer from Spector’s studio tinkering, the deranged producer’s absurd overuse of reverb and phasing threatening to undo the whole of an otherwise fine cabaret-style arrangement from Tempo. All this together results in a finished product that is the aural equivalent of a warm summer afternoon spent at the seaside, the waves gently lapping the ever-warming sand, the heat of the sun causing a mildly hallucinogenic experience. And underneath all of this, there is a layer of slowed-down R&B horns, Spector’s over-the-top phasing effects on the song’s chorus and the myriad other string-derived sounds employed throughout. And yet the gentle, upward ebb and flow of the woodwind melody manages to work perfectly in tandem with the melody. This isn’t so much a complementary line as it is a wholly different melodic idea that makes it sound as though two separate tracks were being played simultaneously. Take, for instance, the woodwind melody that runs counter to the vocal melody. On top of that, there’s layers and layers of ideas and instrumental motifs and you’ve got nearly four-and-a-half minutes of music that could take years to unpack. Yet it’s the melodic device in which these lyrics are delivered that really sells the song, the melody itself taking an odd, yet incessantly attention-grabbing turn into ear worm territory. Opening track “True Love Leaves No Traces” rides along on a fairly straightforward lyric from Cohen, the imagery at once poetic (“ True love leaves no traces/ If you and I are one / It’s lost in our embraces/ Like stars against the sun”) and rooted in romance. It’s this particularly unique quality that makes Death of a Ladies’ Man such a fascinatingly complex listen, in that, regardless of how many times it is heard, never fully permeates the mind of the listener. Rather, it requires a full surrendering on the part of the listener, a loosing of preconceived notions of either Spector or Cohen’s canon as it is so radically different from what either produced before or after as to seem almost willfully anomalous. Because of this, Death of a Ladies’ Man is not an album that can be consumed with indifference or nonchalance. But there’s a certain majestic quality to the arrangements, so steeped in layers and layers of sound that one can almost wander at length through each track, taking notice of something new and different with each and every listen. In essence, Nino Tempo’s arrangements and Spector’s army of first-call session musicians bringing each to life are more often than not bordering on wildly overwhelming. You just have to get past a few things (or completely lose yourself within them) in order to get there. ![]() But it’s also a singular, fascinating entry in the careers of two iconic figures in 20th century music. It’s a wildly overproduced, over-arranged instrumental bacchanal that sounds every bit of its 1977 release date. This baggage alone would make it a difficult listen, but it’s nothing compared to the sounds actually contained within the grooves when viewed within the context of either’s catalog. There’s also the legacy of Spector who would end up dying in prison following a murder conviction, and Cohen’s effective disowning of the album following Spector’s refusal to alter the production to Cohen’s specifications. There’s the obvious complaint regarding the glut of instrumentation and studio effects that were the hallmark of producer Phil Spector, seen as tainting the intimacy of Leonard Cohen’s singular brand of folk song. Death of a Ladies’ Man is a difficult and wholly unique beast of an album.
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