“Tonight I’ll promise you that we’ll give you everything we’ve got . . .” And so Leonard Cohen and his merry men and women kicked off their show at Dublin’s (then) O2 on September 12th, 2013, another staging post on Cohen’s remarkable late-late journey of renewal.
They were true to their word. There are times when Cohen understandably sounds all of his (then) 78 years, though he never drops a line or loses a tune.
“You’re humouring me,” he taunts the wildly enthusiastic audience, but he was the one in control, dextrously weaving his way through classics and more recent gems in an epic 29-song set.
This boxset of three audio CDs and a HD DVD of the performance is perfectly pitched at the Christmas market, but it also documents one of music’s greatest figures at an unlikely artistic high. And in our town too.