Film Noir?
“Lay Back” unfolds like a half-lit confession, its pulse slow and deliberate, as though each beat is a breath taken between memories. The track doesn’t just reference Leonard Cohen’s books Favourite Games and Beautiful Losers — it seems to inhabit their rooms, borrowing the scent of their cigarette smoke and the weight of their silences.
The video for “Lay Back” unfolds like a short, self-contained noir film set within the opulent, time-suspended dining car of the Orient Express.
In striking counterpoint to the film noir narrative it fractures into moments of warmth: a woman, smiling and happy. These scenes arrive like sunlight breaking through a stormed sky, their emotional clarity heightened by the claustrophobic gloom that surrounds them. Her perspective feels like the true voice of the song — the lyrics, when paired with her gaze, take on a tone of reflection, perhaps even quiet defiance. By the end of this three minute video, the viewer is left with the impression that the song’s emotional truth belongs to her, not him.
The male vocal delivery is intimate yet detached, a voice speaking from the edge of a bed at 3 a.m., where desire and disillusionment lie tangled in the same sheets. The instrumentation is sparse but deliberate — synth tones and low, percussive murmurs that feel like the hum of a radiator in winter, or the faint static of a radio tuned just off-station.
Visually, the piece thrives on texture: the grainy 8mm home movie feel, the muted glow of the table lamp, the rhythmic sway of the train which feels like it is following the beat. It’s a world where every surface seems to hold a memory, and every glance could be a clue. The noir influence is unmistakable, but it’s the interplay between shadow and light — suspicion and tenderness — that gives “Lay Back” its lingering power.
The song’s pacing mirrors Cohen’s prose rhythms — languid, elliptical, and unafraid of stillness. It resists the modern urge to fill every space, letting the listener linger in the gaps, where the real intimacy happens.
By the time the track fades, it leaves you with the same aftertaste as Cohen’s novels: a mingling of beauty and ruin, of longing that doesn’t seek resolution. “Lay Back” isn’t just a song — it’s a room you step into, dimly lit, where the air is thick with the ghosts of lovers and the quiet ache of things left unsaid.
