Album: Leonard Cohen, Songs from the Road (Sony Music)

Reviewed by Andy Gill – 10 September 2010

With this CD/DVD combo following swiftly on the heels of last year's Live in London and Live at the Isle of Wight 1970, Leonard Cohen has now released three live sets, and toured the world several times over, since his last studio album, Dear Heather, in 2004.

So there's more than a faint whiff of suspicion that we're just being cajoled into replenishing Lenny's vanished pension fund – though with that warm baritone oozing its way into one's consciousness, who can resist? Songs from the Road draws on rapturously received 2008/9 performances from Europe, North America and Israel, with highlights including a darkly luminous "Avalanche" from Gothenburg, an unbearably poignant "Famous Blue Raincoat" from London, and of course the magisterial "Hallelujah" from the Coachella festival in California.

DOWNLOAD THIS Avalanche; The Partisan; Famous Blue Raincoat; Hallelujah; Suzanne