by nashawa

It’s really difficult to come into an album like Old Ideas without preconceived notions. We all know who Leonard Cohen is and the weight the name carries in this country. As a songwriter, it’s very hard to not trace a trail of influence back to him regardless of the style of music you write. For me, there is no trail: Leo is the be-all-end-all of Canadian songwriting as far as overall package is concerned – in my not-so-humble opinion – so there wasn’t much of a chance for me to be able to listen to the album with a clean ear-slate. I made the mistake of doing this with Tom Waits new album and found that after a while it wasn’t nearly as good as I was giving it credit for. I had ridden a wave of past elation over the choppy seas of Bad as Me’s sub-par (by Waits’ standards) songwriting and arrangement. Continue Reading