On “Death Of A Ladies’ Man” Leonard Cohen said goodbye to the ascetic folk tone of his earlier albums and opened himself up to a more opulent sound.
No one less than Phil Spector was responsible for this. The studio maestro had locked Dion’s “Born To Be With You” in a similarly enigmatic padded cell production two years earlier. But it was only in Cohen that he found the right medium for his delusional, seductive vision of sound.
Deceptive Harmony(s)
All of the lovely harmony on “Death Of A Ladies’ Man” is deceptive, undermined by painful longing, as when Cohen croons over a beguiling web of flutes and brass in “True Love Leaves No Traces”: “As the mist leaves no scar/ On the dark green hill/ So my body leaves no scar/ On you and never will.”
Spector’s over-the-top arrangements don’t do every track any good — and “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On” is nothing more than a bad joke — but the toxic chemistry is right on the haunted “Paper Thin Hotel” and the epic title track.