Everybody knows Sharon Robinson, even if they don’t realise it – she co-wrote Everybody Knows, the mournful yet moreish 1988 earworm that reaffirmed Leonard Cohen as a regal, glass-half-empty rogue for a generation that might have missed him first time around. Robinson’s own version shakes the song loose from Cohen’s doomy lockstep, finding some finger-snapping swing in its familiar checklist of downers. It’s a seductive, conspiratorial highlight of this intimate gig, part of the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter’s first solo tour of Europe.
When she’s not fluidly accompanying herself on piano, Robinson is backed by a trumpeter and her son Michael Gold on keyboards, although Cohen is an almost tangible additional presence in the room. Their musical careers have been entwined for more than 30 years. First recruited as a backing singer in 1979, Robinson soon became one of Cohen’s favoured artistic collaborators, notably co-writing and producing his 2001 album Ten New Songs, the one that announced his return to music after a five-year monasterial furlough.
Robinson is unafraid to be a little old-fashioned. It’s there in the way her own songs – confessional cocktails of soul, jazz and R&B – foreground her alluring, roaming voice. It’s also there in the fact that this gig has an intermission. She plays stripped-down versions of tracks from her recent second solo album Caffeine, and digs rewardingly into material from Ten New Songs. The burdened A Thousand Kisses Deep loses Cohen’s baritone menace, but retains its emotional heft.
At one point, a fan places a bouquet of white lilies on the stage, symbolic of a crowd entirely smitten. Robinson closes with Lucky, a song she co-wrote with Cohen years ago, but has only just got around to recording. “It’s one of the happiest songs I’ve ever written,” she confesses. While it may not be on-brand, it provides a pleasingly uplifting climax.
