2016 has been, by all objective measures, a kind of terrible year — maybe, for Slate readers, 1348 or 72000BC take the cake, but for the rest of us, any year that combines the deaths of David Bowie and Prince with an intensification of the US police force’s apparent crusade to wipe out African Americans, the self-immolation of Britain and the EU, and the rise of Cinnamon Hitler, is a stinker of historic proportions. But! All is not yet lost — well, not on the musical front, anyway, because despite sounding alarmingly fatalistic in the letter he sent to Marianne “So Long, Marianne” Ihlen just before her death, Leonard Cohen is still very much with us. And, even better, he’s releasing a new album!
As spotted by our friends at The Quietus, the great man’s Facebook announced earlier today that the album is called You Want It Darker — “an album of haunting new songs, which the lucky few who have heard it, deem ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘classic Cohen'” — and it’s due in stores “this fall.” Hell yes we want it darker, and the sooner the better.
(Also, as spotted by the website Cohencentric earlier this year, you can hear a snippet of the title track in this, um, adventurous sex scene from Peaky Blinders. Maybe turn off the video if the boss is around.)