Songs Of Love And Hate

Quite early on in my vinyl collecting career I found copies of The Songs of Leonard Cohen, Death Of a Ladies Man and I'm Your Man in the wild. But after that, nothing; so, when my sister asked me for Christmas gift suggestions in 2018 or so, I said I wouldn't mind getting Songs From a Room and Songs of Love and Hate to fill part of a gap on my shelves. Thanks to her I now have relatively recent 180-gram-vinyl re-issues of those two.

Back in my cassette-player days I'd had seven of Laughing Len's albums: I haven't yet felt compelled to re-acquire New Skin for the Old Ceremony or Various Positions, nor have I sought out any of his records from the '90s or later: I should probably at least give the latter a hearing. Like many a mope before & since I've found great solace in the darkness of his lyrics, and Songs of Love and Hate has some of the darkest of them.

My favourite tracks are the first three: an excellent 17 minutes of entertainment. I prefer Side A to Side B, and have grown to dislike 'Joan of Arc', so sometimes lift up the stylus before that gets started.

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All Wrapped Up

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Onslow

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