Famous Blue Raincoat — the album

 "Smoky sax on the title track? It's a meditation on betrayal and revenge, not a lounge song."

That put down is quoted on the Wikipedia page for Jennifer Warnes album Famous Blue Raincoat.

Sneering at that album has been a thing since the day it came out. But I love it.

Let's start with put down quoted above. It's from Peter Gerstenzanga writing for The Village Voice. I've never heard of him and would never have heard of him were it not for Wikipedia. I'm not likely to bother learning any more about him. He plainly doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Betrayal and revenge are classic lounge music themes. (They are also classic country music themes, classical music themes, rock and roll themes ... .)

His criticism would be a stupid even if betrayal and revenge were what the title song was about. But that's a stretch because it's a song in which Leonard Cohen addresses, wait for it, Leonard Cohen. The guy who "planned to go clear", that is, embrace Scientology, was Leonard Cohen. The guy who owned the famous blue raincoat was Leonard Cohen. The guy who went to the station hoping to meet Lilli Marlene was Leonard Cohen.

Who, then, is the guy "who treated my woman" to a flake of his life and left her apparently dislodged, nobody's wife? The temptation is to read this, as Gerstenzanga did, to read this as sexual betrayal. But how to do that, given that all the references up until now have been to Leonard himself? Why would Cohen attribute things from his own life to the man who supposedly betrayed him by having sex with Jane, whoever she is? 

One possibility is that Cohen is the one who seduced Jane when she was in a relationship with another man and here he is putting himself in that man's shoes and imagining how this man might forgive him. And, oh yeah, the song ends with what is at least an attempt at forgiveness, not revenge. I find that reading awkward and presumptuous on Cohen's part but go ahead if you want. Another reading is that Cohen was in love with Jane and treated her in ways that destroyed that relationship so the song can be read as Cohen betraying Cohen. 

Leonard Cohen's big themes are love, sex, betrayal and redemption. And they are all in this song and it works really well with Warnes' loungey interpretation. It's only a problem if, and I suspect this is Gerstenzanga's problem, you're only willing to allow the original any validity. And I can respect that to a point. He has a perfect right to say, "I only like Leonard Cohen's songs in their original versions". But when he says that with his critic hat on, he needs to back it up with good reasons and Gerstenzanga doesn't. 

Gerstenzanga's objections to Warnes' version of "First We Take Manhattan" are also flawed. He first says that he thinks Cohen's voice is more suited to Cohen's songs. Which is another version of the "I prefer" line. But then Gerstenzanga slips up in a way that is very revealing:

"Also, his original arrangements—from solo-guitar bare to brass-band ironic—are more fitting than the slick stuff here. Stevie Ray Vaughan playing processed blues licks on "First We Take Manhattan"? Inappropriate"

Here's the thing, Warnes's version of "First We Take Manhattan" is the original arrangement! And Cohen took part in the recording. 

I'd add that the slicker version works in a different way than Cohen's later, more austere version. And I prefer this way, although you don't have to. The challenge this song presents for me is that it, on the most obvious reading, it's about the mind of a terrorist and I don't think Leonard Cohen is a terribly credible commentator on this or any political subject. In this slicker version, the song has Warnes assuming the role of a deluded, self-aggrandizing person who projects their own moods onto the whole world, not a terrorist, but someone who sits in their parent's basement imagining they might be one.

Warnes achieves this by emphasizing the bridge. She sings most of the song in speech-like diction. Then she just soars on the lines:

"I'd really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes ..." 

 This has the effect of making the song into a dialogue with a single (probably imagined) interlocutor. This interlocutor is the lover that the protagonist has never had. In Cohen's version, those lines are given to the background singers. (Although it is possibly only one singer, a multi-tracked Anjani Thomas made to sound like a chorus). Warnes also only sings the bridge once, which further emphasizes it. Either way, Cohen's version is cold and inhuman, intentionally so. Warnes's version is a damaged human-but-still-very-human protagonist. Both are valid. I think Cohen's lyrics overall work better if you associate them with Warnes' protagonist. 

Warnes' version of "Ain't No Cure for Love",  also the original arrangement and written at Warnes' prompting, is actually quite similar to Cohen's in sentiment. Both versions are full of longing for someone who doesn't long back. The difference is in the singers and here we have to confront a blunt fact: Warnes is just  better singer than Cohen. Warnes sings better than Cohen the way Shohei Ohtani plays baseball better than I do. She has more resources, more power, more range and more control. Cohen's version is compelling and beautiful and, as he often managed, does incredible things with a limited instrument. That said, Warnes is really, really good.

I could go on and on but get a really good pair of headphones and just listen to her album. The good headphones are important: Warnes' album is amazingly well-recorded. This is a true audiophile record, which is not something you could honestly say of any of Cohen's albums. You want to savour every nuance. And there are fascinating interpretative touches all over it that demand close listening. For example, the opening of "Coming Back to You" features a quote from the Christmas Carol "Joy to the World". It's the line "let earth receive her King". 

 This is not just an album of Cohen songs, it's a deep interpretation by an amazing musician who sang with Cohen for years, that Cohen participated in as well as many other incredible musicians that is incredibly well-recorded. You don't have to like it but, before you reject it, give it and the people involved the respect they deserve.