Leonard Cohen, Down From the Mountain

'I got that song on my little laptop," Leonard Cohen says, sitting diminutively on a couch in his suite at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan, both hands clutching an unsipped mug of coffee. He is discussing a new, unreleased track he's recorded, an accomplishment worthy of celebration for the notoriously slow-working Canadian singer, songwriter and recluse. "I should go get it. Want me to go get it?" He scampers out of the room and returns moments later with a black MacBook, opens iTunes and plays a slow dirge. Seemingly oblivious to the anticipation with which fans await a glimpse of new material, he doesn't even request that the rolling tape recorder be stopped.

"Through a net of lies, I'll come to you," his raspy voice intones through a plug–in speaker. "When the dead arise, I will wait there too/If your heart is torn, who can wonder why?/If the night is long, here's my lullabye." As the song ends, he sits enveloped in a stillness that he carries with him like a prayer stick, wearing the same outfit — a black suit, bolo tie and black fedora — he wore onstage the previous night. "I thought that 'Lullabye' was just what everyone needs to get to sleep in these troubled times," he finally says, choosing each word slowly and carefully.