One way to ensure a long career in music is to follow the path of Leonard Cohen.

He started his career sounding like an old man - the likes of Suzanne and So Long, Marianne were released in his early 30s, but the songs could've easily been written while in his 70s.

So now that he is in his 70s - turning 75 this year - he's only catching up to his music. (Think of it this way: how ridiculous do older men sound singing about teen angst? Perhaps a good question for Roger Daltrey, if I ever interview him.)

But in Hamilton this week, on his first tour in 14 years (the tour itself has spanned two years), Cohen is once again sounding like a man beyond his years. His entire career has been put through a smooth jazz filter, with his band jazzing up his already jazzy later hits.

He began a three-hour, career-spanning concert with those latter hits - Ain't No Cure For Love, Secret Life, and other post-Death of a Ladies' Man output.

In their original form, the songs had sharp poetic turns and classic Cohen imagery (anonymous sex, both empty and full relationships, and don't forget longing). But with the full band - including a bevy of wind instruments and a 12-string Spanish guitar - the sharpness turned to schmaltzness.

Still, my two personal favourites - Tower of Song and Famous Blue Raincoat, both performed pretty much solo - were worth the near prohibitive cost of admission (tickets were selling well into the hundreds). On those songs, Cohen seemed to stick to the script, and delivered each as they were meant to be heard: stripped down.

Another example of Cohen this way was his show-stopping poem A thousand kisses deep, which has been rolling around my head more than any other song he played that night.

It reminded me that though Cohen's jazzercized take on old songs made me occasionally roll my eyes, his songs were never about the instruments, but bare emotion and the deep, dark and cool way he expresses it.

See a video of Famous Blue Raincoat here.

Also of interest: I found out that Cohen once appeared on an episode of Miami Vice. Watch it here.