Thursday, December 22, 2016

Video Of The Week: Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer

There are troubling times, to be sure. The world is in turmoil - and not just at war. People's rights are being bought and sold everywhere, usually to the lowest bidder.

The artists we saw a buys and lighthouses, guides in the darkness, are vanishing nearly every week. One such artist, Leonard Cohen, has fortunately left behind a body of work that many will be able to draw from; this week, award-winning writer Neil Gaiman narrates the lyrics of Democracy, with his partner Amanda Palmer accompanying him on piano, and an orchestra arrangement by Jherek Bischoff that features Étienne Abelin (violin), Ola Sendecki (violin), David Schnee (viola), and Lukas Raaflaub (cello) in a video animated and directed by David Mack and Olga Nunes:

What I like most about this version is that it is straightforward, with the words up-front, ahead of all, including melody, which means they do without the cheesy keyboard, 80s electronica-pop parts.

It's the one thing I didn't like about Cohen's oeuvre: the fact that he felt he had to provide cheesy bridges for his dames-of-the-moment to sing, rather than include them in the actual body of the song.

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