I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen By…

Occasionally tribute albums might precipitate a renewed interest in the artist they pay homage to, but it’s rare that one helps turn an obscure deep cut into an omnipresent standard. The John Cale cover of “Hallelujah” that closes out this comp, curated by French music mag Les Inrockuptibles, singlehandedly turned that song from one of Leonard Cohen’s near-castoffs into a standard so ubiquitous — thanks to an assist from Jeff Buckley a few years later — that it somehow wound up in the first Shrek movie. In Cale’s hands, that solo piano number perfectly captures a graceful yet still prickly quality to Cohen’s songwriting, even with a bit of editing (Cale stated that he culled his favorite verses from the original fifteen-page lyric sheet Cohen sent him). But it’s far from alone in this compilation’s highlight reel. R.E.M.’s “First We Take Manhattan” is one of the best covers in the band’s whole catalogue, Stipe and Mills intoning with harmonized dread as the band splits the difference between Crazy Horse’s serrated roots and Gang of Four’s nervy, rhythmic insistence. Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster turns the spaciously lonely “Tower of Song” into a whiskey-scented, bleary-eyed country-rock what-can-ya-do shrug, and the added tone of musical levity just lets the self-effacement sink in easier — though Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ additional version is its own theatrical, ferally glowering psychobilly-opera beast. Pixies’ “I Can’t Forget” is upbeat and overdriven enough to add an edge of agitated anxiety to the original’s atmosphere of existential detachment. And that’s just the best of the I’m Your Man-era covers; the earlier heart of Cohen’s catalogue is represented well by alt-indie artists who find beauty in his sparse quietude, whether it’s The House of Love’s acoustic close-harmony folk interpretation of “Who By Fire” or the rhythm-machine dejection of Peter Astor’s “Take This Longing.”