Leonard Cohen: an Outer Range of music

With the recent release of Outer Range's long awaited follow up, I revisited the enthralling first season. And the fact that Leonard Cohen's Avalanche plays a key role in the very pilot, topping Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, is a mood defining move for the show.

Leonard Cohen is definitely everywhere these days. From Robert Pattinson's gaze in the I'm your man Dior television commercial, to the film Past Lives ("Hey that's no way...", a separate article is planned). In 2022, the intriguing Outer Range series put his song Avalanche in very special spot.

Back in 2011, the Johnny Cash - Bob Dylan duet, "Girl from the north country", allowed the Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper's romance to step forward in Silver Linings Playbook. A look at the cut scenes revealed that Leonard Cohen had been left out of the sequence. In 2022, Outer Range, whose second season is airing right now on AMAZON PRIME , righted this one.

This Plan B produced series, blends Dallas with a supernatural element straight out of a Stephen King novel. In fact Outer Range's very title is an obvious nod to The Twilight Zone's (CBS) competing series, The Outer Limits (ABC). Its superb cast - Josh Brolin, Will Patton, Lily Taylor, Tamara Podemski - is served with a beautiful cinematography, a thought provoking plot... and a hell of a fucking soundtrack.

For its first episode, three influential figures of North American music are played in this order: Leonard Cohen's Avalanche, followed by Cash's Cry, Cry, Cry (which I sang heartily on my daily shower routine when I was 15), and the closing credits attuned to Bob Dylan's Idiot wind. If you tell me Bob Dylan is most important than the other two, we ain't gonna be friends. But choosing between John and Leonard is like choosing between your mother and father.

More important, Leonard is not American. He is, as I read once in an hilarious Youtube comment, "The Leonard Cohen of Canada". And while Johnny Cash can be faintly heard through the radio of the local honky joint and Dylan is there to give the closing credits some music, Leonard Cohen's Avalanche plays out in an otherwordly, deeply impacting fashion. To the point that I remarked some tonal notes were reprised within the second season's instrumental score, as if this choice was, indeed, the musical backbone of the whole series.

Taken from Songs of Love and Hate, Avalanche is one of Leonard Cohen's most arid songs. It's neither Suzanne nor That's no way... There's nothing gentle or welcoming here. Only loneliness, desolation and that strange feeling of being eaten away from the inside by an invisible force.

This dryness is there to echo the main character's inner turmoil. Interpreted by Josh Brolin, this silent and brooding Wyoming cowboy is hiding a terrible secret from his family. His silence serves the first season's final twist, which left me speechless.

It's not the first time Leonard's music has been chosen as an illustration of the American rootsy, agricultural landscape. Recently, the wondrous Gregory Alan Isakov closed This Empty northern hemisphere album with a cover of One of us cannot be wrong. Back in 71, Robert Altman chose Leonard Cohen's songs as the score for McCabe and Mrs Miller.

The first season of Outer Range kept going, showcasing some of the best north american music, with the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Lee Hazlewood and Bruce Springsteen. While these major figures are played out, there is one character singing more recent, pop hits, giving the whole setlist a very interesting flavor.

To go through the hole of this supernatural family drama, Outer Range's season 1 & 2 are available on Amazon Prime . And it's a hell of a ride. Now to season 3!

Bonus content:

Lost in motion, Avalanche by Leonard Cohen (2014): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWQhbYdqzXA

The French version of this article is available here.

Sylvain THURET, content creator, Jam Time (2024).