Review – Hallelujah! 80 Years of Leonard Cohen

I began my love affair with the music of Leonard Cohen after seeing the 2006 film I’m Your Man, a film featuring renditions of Cohen’s music by famous artists in a tribute concert at the Sydney Opera House. That tribute concert often featured radical reinterpretations of the original versions. Hallelujah! 80 years of Leonard Cohen, performed by Northern suburbs duo Touché (Tess Coleman and Michael Liddle) is a far more traditional form of tribute show.

From the very outset, it is clearly apparent that Liddle and Coleman are lifelong Cohen fans, or tragics, as Liddle calls himself. He cites his recent purchase of a fedora as evidence of his passionate desire to emulate his idol. Throughout their lives, the performers have accumulated vast quantities of images, memorabilia and rare footage of Cohen, and this is cleverly incorporated into the show via slide and video projection behind the stage throughout the performance. As such, even the most devout fan of the Montreal singer-poet will emerge from the show with a wealth of new knowledge about the performer.

Cohen trivia is not only conveyed through digital images, however. The duo introduces every song that they perform with interesting and sometimes humorous anecdotes about the origins and meanings behind the songs. The set list covers the majority of Cohen’s career, apart from his most recent works. The quality of the musicianship of the duo is not flawless, but the songs are performed with such earnestness and evident joy that these flaws can be overlooked. Music snobs that want exact replication can pay $150 to see the great man perform in person. Music lovers, however, will enjoy the history lesson and the mere enunciation of his lyrics by a pair of musicians that have been touched the power of those words.