Customer Reviews
Not impressed - By: Mr. Robert Roberts, 22 Apr 2008 
As the caption says, Not impressed. Would not recommend this if you like the "Normal" Cohen style. Will keep tryingin the hope that it grows on me.
Why Don't You Try? - By: pikeyboy, 09 Aug 2007 
I feel compelled to leap to the defence of New Skin. Though I can say absolutely without doubt that it is not his greatest album, it contains at least three of Cohen's greatest songs - those being Chelsea Hotel*2, Who By Fire?, & best of all, Field Commander - though the latter is much better served on the live album/tour of 1979 bearing that same title.
The firstin a string of three John Lisseur-produced albums (a sequence interrupted only by the disappointing collaboration Death Of A Ladies' Man, with Phil Spector,) the songs contained here amount, really, to the first tentative steps towards the established, trademark sound of latterday Lenny. The opener - Is This What You Wanted? - to me is one of the scrappiest songs Cohen has ever made, but it does have a great uptempo chorus offset with such scathing lyrics, signalling some change of mood from the lush & unadulterated melancholy of his previous masterpiece, the evergreen & sometimes disturbing Songs Of Love And Hate.
Chelsea Hotel*2 follows. A stand-out, a classic and, live, always a crowd-pleaser, but on this album something of a throwback to an even-then-already-mighty back catalogue. Lover Lover Lover (again better-served on Field Commander Live) is the perfect funked-up antidote, however, to any backward-glancing. Lyrically, thematically, it is as chock-full of lines of self-loathing & calls for redemption as much of his greatest work, but it has a musical power that simply sweeps you along for the journey. Field Commander is a tour-de-force & songwriting taken to another level again. Muscular, biting, both tough & tender, it must have taken him years to complete every little nuance. In four minutes, Cohen tells more & says more than most novelists doin a lifetime. Musically, too, this song (aided by Lisseur's complimentary arrangements) is a giant step forward from what others might perceive as the more droning prior scapes of Love And Hate. Only four songs in, then, & already so many shifting perspectives it's almost breathtaking. Side One of the original vinyl closes with one of my very favourite of Leonard's lighter little ditties - Why Don't You Try? - a sort of nursery-rhyme for grown-ups.
Side Two (orig.) begins with another uptempo classic - There Is A War, followed by A Singer Must Die, another of his great lyrics, & like Chelsea Hotel*2, somewhat retrograde again. But of all LC's sometimes overlooked lesser songs, I feel I could write ten volumes of prose about I Tried To Leave You & never do justice to its sweet & understated bluesology, or defend to the death the case for the absolute necessity of its inclusion here. Who By Fire? points more towards the devotional Leonard of Various positions. Take This Longing, fine as it is, again seems to hark back to another style, & the closer - Leaving Greensleeves - bookends the album. Not my favourite track by any measure, but I wouldn't be without it.
New Skin For The Old Ceremony: the irony of the title more-or-less gives it away. Something Old & New, somewhere between the sixties Cohen & the old master of the last three decades. On Songs From A Room, Songs Of Love And Hate & Live Songs, the brilliant Bob Johnson managed to define a lasting blueprint of the Cohen legacy, but all great artists crave variety. This fine classic, along with the subsequent Lisseur-produced masterpieces that are Recent Songs & Various Positions placed together might convincingly lay claim to being the absolute pinnacles of Cohen's songwriting achievements: only time will tell...
I'm a great fan of LC - but I can't completely love this CD - By: Keith Joseph, 21 Jan 2006 
I have all of Leonard Cohen's CD's as they are really cheap now & my LP collection of LC from the 70's onwards isn't a patch on the sound quality of these re-released CD's (and no download compression effects on sound quality here). I always buy the original album's though rather than compilations, as I think the cohesion of tracks originally recorded together far outweighs any price or quality advantages of compilations. Besides as shown by the other reviews here what lights your fire is very personal & your favourite LC track may not even make it onto a 'best of' compilation.
However, despite repeated listening to this album, I haven't really fallen totallyin love with it. If I persevere I find all the tracks fairly good to excellent, but I find it just falls short of what I consider to be LC's best work, e.g. Various Positions, Songs from a room & I'm your man. The lyrics just lack a little bite or black humour, & the songs all sound a bit the same - although with tracks like 'Chelsea Hotel', 'Lover Lover Lover', & 'There is a war' this isn't necessarily a really bad thing. Soin its favour it has cohesion & an almost Jim Reeve's style silky delivery. I suppose it just lacks the odd startlingly original song like 'Bird on a wire' (Songs from a room), Everybody Knows/Tower of song (I'm your man), 'Death of a Ladies Man' (from the CD of the same name), Closing time/Future (The future) or 'The Captain' (Various positions). Overall this CD has more of a 'Dear Heather' feel to it - although 'New Skin' has a superior set of songs. So not my choice for the desert island selection, but worth havingin any LC collection none the less. If you are new to Leonard Cohen I'd try a CD like 'Various Positions' & 'I'm your man' first - but given the low price Leonard Cohen CDs often sell for, you could easily add this one into your order as well & see if you agree.
Why don't you come on back to the war? - By: A fellow creature, 15 Apr 2005 To my mind this is Cohen's best album, achieving an impressive coherence of vision & texture whilst offering more variety of musical tone & timbre than any of his other (not inconsiderable) works. The arrangements are beautifully fitting, the instrumentation is subtle but much richer than on the preceding acoustic guitar oriented albums, & Cohen isin terrific voice, raw with unsuppressed rage & regret on 'Is This What You Wanted' & 'Leaving Greensleeves'. Casual or cloth-eared listeners hold that the Cohen worldview is depressing, but 'New Skin' is ripe with Len's characteristic dark wit & irreverent wordplay, affirming language & melody as (albeit flimsy) bulwarks against life's inevitable humiliations. The songs revelin the bitter comedy of sex & love & the recurrent theme is relationships as war, with the self-styled 'Field Commander Cohen' invariably among the vanquished. But insead of the standard self-pity of the sensitive singer-songwriter, Cohen offers us ironically humorous dissections of his own compromised motives & dirty psychic undercurrents, as well as those of his usually victorious partners. Love is always tinged with hate, adoration with contempt & desire with disgust, so thatin the end even the winnersin the battle of the sexes are victims of their own worst impulses. As he declaresin 'There Is A War', there can be no armistice; the only option is to return to the front & prepare for the next defeat.
POETIC FUSION OF SOUND AND WORD - By: Pieter, 14 Dec 2001 New Skin For The Old Ceremony represents the artist's open break with the early folk simplicity of his classic albums Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Songs From A Room & Songs of Love & Hate (on which a harder sound already surfaced on tracks like Diamonds In The Mine). It harnesses a wider array of instruments including trombones, viola, banjo, percussion, mandolin, woodwinds & trumpet. Emily Bindiger, Erin Dickins & co-producer John Lissauer contribute backing vocals.
This fuller instrumentation with a stronger emphasis on bass & drums, together with a less restrained vocal style, make the sound more varied by taking it closer to the rock tradition. Someone used to the flowing melody lines of the early songs will find e.g. Is This What You Wanted harsh & even dissonant. It is clear that this direction culminatedin the Phil Spector-produced Death of a Ladies' Man (1978), a nightmare for the artist but beloved by many.
The previous year's live album, Live Songs, display an even greater intensity & raw power on tracks like Please Don't Pass Me By. The themes are the same but the humor is more overt asin Chelsea Hotel, the moving portrait of Janis Joplin. Although the tunes are less striking on gentle numbers like I Tried to Leave You & There is a War, the insight & poetic quality of the lyrics are always arresting.
His distinct spirituality is muchin evidence on tracks like the rocking track Lover Lover Lover, the solemn Take This Longing & the somber Who by Fire, a song inspired by a solemn prayer relating to the concept of the Book of Life with special significance to the High Holy Days Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur. In a slight tweak, Leonard has modified the chilling finality of the words, shifting the emphasis to the search for the Eternal Divine.
Track number four would become the title of the live album Field Commander Cohen recorded on the 1979 tour & releasedin 2000. So although not all the songs live up to the legendary compositions on his earlier 1960s work & some sound rough by comparison, New Skin For The Old Ceremony confirms Cohen's unusual gift for arresting metaphor, intriguing symbolism & imagery layered with allusion.
