New Skin for the Old Ceremony

New Skin for the Old Ceremony

Studio album by Leonard Cohen, released in 1974. On this album, Cohen began to move away from the rawer sound of his previous albums, using violas, mandolins, banjos, guitars, percussion and other instruments that give the album a more orchestrated (yet still spare) aspect of sound. The original cover art was an image from the alchemical text Rosarium philosophorum. The two winged and crowned beings in sexual embrace caused his U.S. record label, Columbia Records, to print one early edition of the album minus the image substituting instead a photo of Cohen.

In 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the Yom Kippur day, Leonard Cohen arrived in Israel. He reached the front in Sinai with Israeli musicians Oshik Levi, Matti Caspi and Ilana Rovina to perform for the young Israeli soldiers. In 1974 Cohen released his new album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, with songs inspired by the war. "Lover Lover Lover", was written and performed in Sinai. "Who By Fire", written reflecting on the war, takes its name from the Yom Kippur prayer, the Unetaneh Tokef. Other songs inspired by the war are "Field Commander Cohen" and "There is a War".