Review: My Leonard Cohen

Obviously realising that he could never replicate that sound, D’Arrietta instead offered versions of Cohen’s best-known tracks in a bluesy growl (at times almost Louis Armstrong-like) which, it must be said, took a while to get used to.

Nevertheless, the show worked, simply due to the strength of the songs themselves, as we began with a stirring take on Everybody Knows, before a proper introduction and the first of some biographical details and insight into Cohen’s life (and the first of several anti-Trump jokes). Then we were treated to one of LC’s most notoriously depressing pieces (and there were a few), Famous Blue Raincoat, before a little chat about his abiding love for Greece and a spirited Tower Of Song.

The old standards (Bird On A Wire, Suzanne, Chelsea Hotel and a repeat of the rumour that Cohen had a fling with Janis Joplin there, and So Long, Marianne, which D’Arrietta hoped would be a sing-along, and almost was) predominated, and yet there were rather more recent cuts, like the frighteningly apocalyptic The Future (used on the soundtrack to Natural Born Killers) and First We Take Manhattan, which was stripped of its dated synthesisers and strikingly played as a sort of tango.

The dark and ominous side of Cohen was well evident (The Final Dance turned up, with its Holocaust edges and klezmer sound), as well as much of his sly humour and trademark eroticism and carnality. As we reached the end, D’Arrietta grabbed a keytar, introduced his backing band (Mark Meyer, John Bettison, Victor Rounds and Michael Kluger) before Sisters Of Mercy and the grand finale which, of course, turned out to be just about Cohen’s most famous and celebrated song. Now what was it called again?

My Leonard Cohen was performed at GC at The German Club’s Showroom One and continues until Sunday, March 12