{"id":26643,"date":"2016-11-15T14:23:34","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T22:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/?p=26643"},"modified":"2016-11-15T14:28:32","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T22:28:32","slug":"the-perfect-repurposing-for-these-times-listen-to-okkervil-rivers-cover-of-leonard-cohens-authoritative-anthem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/2016-11\/the-perfect-repurposing-for-these-times-listen-to-okkervil-rivers-cover-of-leonard-cohens-authoritative-anthem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Repurposing For These Times: Listen to Okkervil River’s Cover of Leonard Cohen’s Authoritative “Anthem”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"leonard-cohen2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s times like these…. In the wake of Leonard Cohen’s<\/strong> passing nearly a week ago and while finishing up their tour leg in England, Okkervil River<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0honored\u00a0Cohen<\/strong>\u00a0by covering his So Long Marianne<\/strong><\/em> and his inspirational hymn\u00a0Anthem<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Okkervil River’s Will Sheff<\/strong> then put the latter cover’s audio to a picture taken from their travels on a ferry to Germany and posted it with the following statement:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a terrible week, over here finishing a European tour watching my country slide towards doom. The news of Leonard Cohen\u2019s<\/strong> death had nothing to do with everything else in the news but, in my agitated state, seemed somehow like it did. Cohen<\/strong> was a songwriting hero to me. I opened our Bristol show, the morning after the announcement of his death, with this solo cover of \u2018Anthem,\u2019<\/strong><\/em> which sounds distressingly appropriate to the current moment. We did a full band version of \u2018So Long, Marianne\u2019<\/strong> <\/em>later in the set. This picture was taken on the ferry from Denmark to Germany. Grey afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out the song’s lyrics below, along with the following encouragement by the wondrous Cohen<\/strong> about the song’s chorus:<\/p>\n

“That is the background of the whole record, I mean if you have to come up with a philosophical ground, that is ‘Ring the bells that still can ring.’ It\u2019s no excuse the dismal situation, and the future is no excuse for an abdication of your own personal responsibilities towards yourself and your job and your love. ‘Ring the bells that still can ring’: they\u2019re few and far between but you can find them. ‘Forget your perfect offering’ that is the hang-up that you\u2019re gonna work this thing out. Because we confuse this idea and we\u2019ve forgotten the central myth of our culture which is the expulsion from the garden of Eden. This situation does not admit of solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together, physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that\u2019s where the light gets in, and that\u2019s where the resurrection is and that\u2019s where the return, that\u2019s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

RIP Leonard Cohen<\/strong>.<\/p>\n