Credit: AP Photos/Chris Pizzelo

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Need a moment to center yourself before this crazy holiday season takes off? Take a few minutes to listen to “Show Me The Place,” a new song streaming on Leonard Cohen’s website and embedded below.

The tune is our first peek at “Old Ideas,” the legendary singer/songwriter’s first studio album in eight years. Out Jan. 31, the 10-song collection addresses transcendence, love, sexuality, loss and death. A statement from his label, Columbia, heralds it as “arguably the most overtly spiritual” of Cohen’s albums.” 

If “Show Me the Place” is any indication, it is a reverential, compassionate examination of faith. In his gravelly, beaten-down baritone, the 77-year old asks Jesus to show him the place “where you want your slave to go.”  Bolstered by an elegant, simple piano — and later strings — the song has a feeling of a great gospel tune, although we’re not sure about the background vocals.  No matter what your belief, it’s worth listening just to hear his sense of supplication before something greater than himself and intention.

[More after the jump...]

Cohen revealed more about the album early this year when he received  a prize in literature in Spain in October: “As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. And the instructions were these...Never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity & beauty."

Patrick Leonard, Anjani Thomas, Ed Sanders and Dino Soldo produced the album, which includes guest vocals from Dana Glover, Sharon Robinson, The Webb Sisters, and Jennifer Warnes.
 

OLD IDEAS TRACK LISTING:
Going Home
Amen
Show Me The Place
The Darkness
Anyhow
Crazy To Love You
Come Healing
Banjo
Lullaby
Different Sides