An artist, lyrically
profound, his music can be enthralling, and is often times described as "somber poetry". He's not very well known, however he did have one song,
Cry Ophelia, that did fairly well. He's from
Montreal,
Canada.. and yes, he is the son of
Leonard Cohen, though they aren't that distinctly similar, probably because he grew up with his
mother. I'd almost slip him into the
adult contemporary category, but his music often has a
rockish edge to it. This quote, from him, of course, was on the page promoting his fairly new (
1998), and first album:
"I fall in
love every day with someone, something or a place. It's the result of an
acrobatic imagination. I suppose the darkness comes from the fact that I suffer great disappointment with
life on a regular basis and the best therapy is to write about it. It's
song-writing as exorcism."
That makes more sense than anything I've heard in a while. Any way, he's
neat. He also does a lot of french stuff, there are a couple on his self-titled album.
The lyrics to his songs deal mostly with
love. He admits himself that the subject has been exhausted, but he still finds it "
endlessly fascinating", and I personally think the lyrics are much more
profound than a lot of cheesy love songs I've heard in my time.
He really didn't have a whole lot of musical experience, in groups and such, prior to his album, though he did work with
Chris Stills for a time. Some say that for this reason his album isn't quite what it could have been, but then again, I doubt most people
give it a chance. The songs don't seem entirely too
appealing when you first hear them, but much like anything, it's best to give it time before you make a final judgement.
"I wanted a classic sound with a modern sensibility and at the same time create an intimacy so that the narration of the songs was never interrupted by the music."
It worked. Check this guy out if you're looking for something
unique, I've heard very few artists with even remotely similar
styles. The music is so dark, but somehow it seems upbeat, and dance-able, and most of all, the lyrics just make
a lot of sense.
http://www.adamcohen.com - He's taken the time to go through each of his songs and write a
brief synopsis of its meaning to him, and the site also has
audio samples, lyrics, etc.