Ultimate first world problems…

…I buy depressing records and then it’s far too nice outside for me to listen to them. Recently arrived from eBay are: Tom Waits – Rain Dogs, Neil Young – On the Beach, Leonard Cohen – Songs From a Room and Leonard Cohen – Death of a Ladies Man.

These are all in somewhat sub-par condition, but then again they were also quite cheap. Rain Dogs is also admittedly not very depressing. Waits does sounds great on vinyl though, in spite of the abundance of surface noise on this particular copy.

On the Beach and early Leonard Cohen are an entirely different story on the ‘depressing music’ front. On the Beach is widely regarded as one of Young’s bleakest records, and rightly so. Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs From a Room and the like are the albums you put on when you’re feeling melancholy at 3am. I may or may not have had experience with this last weekend.

Death of a Ladies Man is actually not early Cohen though. It’s his 1977 Phil Spector-produced ‘baroque pop’ record. It’s also the only one of these albums I haven’t heard before. Needless to say, I’m curious.

I’m still gonna go with 3/4 albums as depressing though. Leonard Cohen has a tendency to spread melancholy wherever he goes, Phil Spector or no Phil Spector.