Anjani – “Blue Alert” (2006)
A review by Pico Iyer from January 2007 the Shambala Sun website. Anjani Thomas recorded this album with the production and lyrical help of the one and only Leonard Cohen, who happens to be Anjani’s romantic partner. Anjani has also provided backing vocals for Mr. Cohen over the years. This is definitely an album worth picking up for any Cohen fan, but even if you’re not…
Thanks for the Dance
Pico Iyer considers Leonard Cohen—the ladies’ man, the balladeer, the Zen poet, and the essence of cool with a new love giving voice to his songs of parting and old age.
Through the long hot nights of summer and early autumn I have been listening to the ten newest songs from Leonard Cohen, almost unbearably sad in their themes and beautiful in their bareness, yet turned sultry and smoky and rich with a full-bodied looseness thanks to his collaborator in life and in art, Anjani. The songs on Anjani’s album (as it is officially), Blue Alert, are all about goodbye and “closing time” and passing away from the scene. “Tired” is the word that recurs, and “old,” and the picture that Cohen uses for himself on the back cover (as the album’s “producer”) makes him look out of focus and almost posthumous, fading from our view. Yet when such songs of parting and old age are delivered by a young, fresh, commanding woman singer, they take on a much more complicated resonance. Sweet as much as bitter, with the echo of spring in the dark of early winter. Read the rest of this entry »
The Beat Patrol 