I must say, I’ll always prefer Leonard Cohen’s early records, when it was just him singing against sparse arrangements, sometimes nothing more than an acoustic guitar. As such, my fave track on Old Ideas might just be Crazy to Love You, which also happens to be the most minimalist. Whereas elsewhere on this first studio album in eight years from the veteran Montreal songwriter, the musical backdrop (including the backup singers) occasionally verges on schmaltzy. Cohen’s lyrics, though, never fail to amaze, and his voice seems to grow ever deeper and warmer as time goes by.