I am listening to You Want It Darker in my bed-nest and am loving it. It'd be startling if it weren't... Leonard Cohen - I mean, what is there else to expect?

It's difficult for me to listen to LC because my mother loved him, and was of his era, and I think I heard his songs through her ears and experiences rather than my own. I dissuaded my sister from having House of the Rising Sun played at her funeral (she claimed my mother loved it and she (my sister) was tickled that it was about a whore house) and in exasperation I just put my foot down and suggested a friend would play 'Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye on the flute, which my mother played and she went for it. My father felt it was horribly inappropriate, but relented when I said it would just be the music. I probably shouldn't have pushed that on him, as it was one of the songs they'd loved together - and now I associate with it her too much to be able to enjoy it any more properly. Ah, for fuck's sake. It's hard having a mammal brain and all these chemicals. Anyway, that's my little jolly Leonard Cohen story.

Nevertheless, this album is a v good thing.