Dear Heather is the 11th studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen , released by Columbia Records in 2004. It was dedicated "in memory of Jack McClelland 1922-2004."
8-480: The album features Cohen experimenting with different musical approaches. On "To a Teacher", Cohen quotes himself from The Spice-Box of Earth , his second collection of poetry from 1961. The basic tracks of "The Faith" dated back to the Recent Songs sessions from 1979. The album includes a live version of the country standard " Tennessee Waltz ", which was taken from a performance during his tour in support of
16-414: A songwriter, it is a fine, decent, and moving way to close this chapter of the book of his life." All tracks are written by Leonard Cohen, except where noted Sales figures based on certification alone. Shipments figures based on certification alone. The Spice-Box of Earth The Spice-Box of Earth is Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen 's second collection of poetry. It
24-533: A tone of finality in the offering. The New York Times reported, "Some of the songs are virtually unadorned with poetic imagery and fall flat; in others, Mr. Cohen uses his calmly sepulchral voice for speech rather than melody. The production is homemade." The Stylus deemed it an "unsatisfying way to end such an intriguing career." In the November 2004 Rolling Stone review of the LP, Michaelangelo Matos praised
32-641: The LP Various Positions . Considering the plethora of sources from which the material sprang, Cohen had originally wanted to call the album Old Ideas , but eventually changed it to Dear Heather for fear that fans might assume it was merely a compilation or "best of" package ( Old Ideas would be the title of Cohen's next studio album). There is increase in spoken poetry over singing, with two songs featuring words by other writers: Lord Byron ("No More a-Roving") and F. R. Scott ("Villanelle for our Time"). The gospel -tinged "On That Day" addresses
40-486: The album, calling Cohen " Canada 's hippest 70 year old" and insisting that "given how monochromatic Cohen tends to be, the jumbled feel works in Dear Heather' s favor." Thom Jurek of AllMusic argues that Dear Heather is Cohen's "most upbeat" album: "Rather than focus on loss as an end, it looks upon experience as something to be accepted as a portal to wisdom and gratitude...If this is indeed his final offering as
48-534: The cover is by Montreal photographer John Max , and has been reused on the cover of the 2006 reprint of Let Us Compare Mythologies . Following The Spice-Box of Earth , Cohen retreated for several years to the treeless Argolic island of Hydra in Greece , where he began work on the more angular, abrasive poems collected in Flowers for Hitler in 1964 . This article about a collection of written poetry
56-938: The still-raw tragedy and horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks . The album reached #131 on the Billboard 200 and Internet Album charts and #5 on the Canadian Album charts. It was Cohen's highest charting album in America since 1969's Songs from a Room . The album's highest chart position came in Poland where it reached #1 on the Polish Albums Chart . Dear Heather was not received as well by critics as Ten New Songs and Cohen's 2001 live album Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 had been. Some critics found it dour - although such notices had been commonplace throughout various stages of Cohen's career - and noted
64-506: Was first published in 1961 by McClelland and Stewart , when Cohen was 27 years old. The book brought the poet a measure of early literary acclaim. One of Cohen's biographers, Ira Nadel , stated that "reaction to the finished book was enthusiastic and admiring. . .[noting that] the critic Robert Weaver found it powerful and declared that Cohen was 'probably the best young poet in English Canada right now.'" The photograph used on
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