Songs of Love and Hate

Cohen's new backing band, The Army, was led by Ron Cornelius. Sing Another Song, Boys was recorded live at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, Joan of Arc was written at the Chelsea Hotel, and Paul Buckmaster arranged the strings and horns. Cohen said in 1991 that everything around him was beginning to fall apart, and in a 1973 NME interview called the record over-produced and an experiment that failed.

It reached number 4 in Britain, number 2 in the Netherlands and number 145 in the United States, and went gold in Canada. Singles were Dress Rehearsal Rag and Joan of Arc. AllMusic's Mark Deming called it one of his most emotionally intense albums, and the BBC's Tim Nelson called it one of the scariest albums of the last forty years.

Most of the album was recorded at Columbia Studio A in Nashville between 22 and 26 September 1970. Love Calls You by Your Name is a minor rewrite of an unpublished 1967 song, Love Tries to Call You by Your Name. Judy Collins recorded Dress Rehearsal Rag in 1966 on In My Life, and Cohen said he would never sing it in concert. He told Paul Zollo that his syncopated classical-guitar chop is especially evident on Avalanche, and that he never felt Famous Blue Raincoat was finished. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds recorded Avalanche on From Her to Eternity in 1984.

The cover is a black-and-white photo of Cohen smiling with several days' beard, and the back cover quotes his short poem They Locked Up a Man. Cohen played every song from the album live except Last Year's Man. Pitchfork's Brian Howe found the record thinner and less even than the first two but said Avalanche, Last Year's Man and Famous Blue Raincoat alone justify its classic status. It reached number 8 in Australia.