Leonard Cohen's new release.

Grade: A-

What is it that happens between a man and a woman?

Beneath the lyrical exuberance and keen melodies that make up Leonard Cohen's world of song lie some brutal intimations. By way of a saint who teaches "that the duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule." By way of a letter brimming with mournful gratitude in which the singer addresses his woman's one-time lover with the ravishing line "Thank you, for the trouble you took from her eyes." By the devastating lilt of the thought that "maybe love's like the smoke, beyond all repair."

On August 31, 1970, at 2 a.m., on the fifth day of the third incarnation of the Isle of Wight music festival, Cohen took the stage in what was the event's penultimate performance (now available on CD and DVD as " Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 ") wedged between Jimmy Hendrix and Richie Havens. Dubbed Desolation Row, the largish concert setting on the famed British island had been graced with conditions so inclement, a mood so turbulent and pilgrims so abundant, that an aura of one-uppism was duly in the air. Woodstock, which, depending on one's aesthetics and politics, became either the apex or the nadir of such gatherings just a year before, loomed large. The lineup was rich and eclectic, ranging from The Who to Miles Davis, and including sets by Kris Kristofferson, Joan Baez and Judy Collins.

The latter three are among the musicians tapped to bring anecdotal immediacy to

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the DVD version of the recording -- which fact, while not unwelcome, is not essential to its success.

The audio counterpart, which is superior by virtue of its fidelity to chronology, is a curious example of how true a guide an aural experience can be for the mind's eye, which cannot but visualize a weary-eyed poet standing alone, declaiming deeply-felt lines into formidable darkness -- which, it so happens, is the essential, lingering image provided by the film.

By turns of phrase so sharp and disconsolate as to stir the coldest of sensibilities, the grocer of despair swiftly gets the attention of an exhausted, volatile and nearly invisible crowd of 600, 000. There's a perceptible calm settling in as the set moves on, as each melancholy verse builds with an irony that forces the corners of one's mouth to turn ever-so-slightly up. The voice penetrating and vital, bitter but full of worldly appetite, and inflected by the sense that much is unrequited, or, if requited, unsustainable ... but, regardless, worth troubling oneself with.

Though the well-honed band and backup singers at times enhance, they mostly seem to respectfully recede. Devoid of percussive interference, the core quality of each song often feels expressed by one guitar and one voice: A culmination of songwriting that echoes Yeats' notion about that enviable realm of the creative process where the mind has had the fortune of moving uninterrupted upon silence.

Again and again, the effect alternates between corporeal and spiritual. As when Cohen plays the melody of "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" by whistling through his clenched hands. As when he shares his sense of yearning in the near-farewell remark, "maybe this is good music to make love to."

Those with whom Cohen resonates will find the Isle of Wight recording an affirmation that the strength of his early work was tested and established nearly forty years ago.

They are the ones who will "cry and cry and laugh about it all again."

And they are the ones bound to drink to that and sing to that and keep keeping on to that for some time to come.

-- Rudy Mesicek