If you were bummed Leonard Cohen’s tour didn’t come near us, I gather from Ann Powers’ review that you can get a good taste of the show listening to Cohen’s new Live in London. It’s one of the handful of live albums I recommend, in this case because most of his albums were pinned like a butterfly to a corkboard to the eras they were made in by trendy production. Here, songs of different eras sit comfortably side by side and nothing is gimmicky.

The album also confirms the nagging suspicion that there has always been a sense of humor beneath all the earnest gravity in his voice and poetry. His deadpan delivery at the show in London’s 02 Arena made between song banter such as “It’s wonderful to be gathered here on just the other side of intimacy” far funnier than it is on paper, and the introduction to “Ain’t No Cure for Love” is all smart and witty. But much of the humor is more conceptual as he pairs his froggy voice with a 5-note range with the quintessential female backing vocalists. Make no mistake – the stern songs remain serious stuff; he doesn’t play his songs for laughs, but there are laughs in them for those not steamrolled by his aura, most obviously in “Tower of Song” (which I keep associating a bit literally as a reflection on the Brill Building and that era of pop, rightly or wrongly).