Cohen's son Adam explains the material is prepared for a potential 2019 release.
A posthumous album from Leonard Cohen is in the pipeline, according to the late singer’s son and long-time producer Adam.
One of the most influential and respected singer-songwriters of the pop era, Leonard Cohen passed away in 2016 at the age of 82, just a couple of months after releasing the final album in his lifetime, You Want It Darker.
His son, Adam Cohen, worked as the producer on that album, and he told CBC’s ‘q’ programme this week, in an interview due to be aired in full on Monday (October 1st) that some recently discovered songs in near/part completion are being put together for a posthumous release at some point in 2019.
“I was tasked with finishing a few more songs of his that we started together on the last album, so his voice is literally still in my life,” Adam Cohen said. “It’s a bizarre and delicious entanglement.”
Leonard Cohen passed away in November 2016
“To make a long story short, I believe that there are some really beautiful new songs of Leonard Cohen that no one’s heard that are at some point going to come out,” he explained, adding that the tone of this material “resembles his older work, something more romantic.”
“There are these songs that exist that he wanted finished, these incredible powerful readings that were set to music,” he said. “It’s going to surprise and delight.”
The news comes ahead of the imminent publication of a new book of poetry from Leonard Cohen, written in the months before his death, titled ‘The Flame’ and out on October 2nd.
“He was a man on a quest, on a mission,” Adam says in a separate interview with The Guardian, describing his father’s increasing sense of purpose and dedication in his final months of life as he battled leukaemia. “That probably bought him some time on Earth.”
More: Leonard Cohen writes heartbreaking final letter to muse Marianne Ihlen