Maximalism in Pop Music

I love this. Leonard Cohen was mentioned reverently here a while back, and this is billed as his own favorite version of one of his signature tunes. It's also everything that makes crawl the skin of people who revere restraint and elegance above all other musical (if not literary) values. Lang seems never to have met a melodramatic impulse she didn't like. (Her version of Neil Young's "Helpless" is Wagnerian.) Plus, at this stage of her life and career she clearly doesn't give a shit; comes out on stage barefoot, in a bathrobe, looking like Zatoichi. A liberating spectacle.