Say what you like about popular trends defining the shape of the music an artist creates, there are still musicians out there who sound exactly the way they want, and foremost among them is Leonard Cohen.

And if he can make an album of whatever music he damn well pleases at the age of 80 and have it sound as good as ‘Popular Problems’ does, then more power to him.

Opening track Slow may as well be a grumbling and moody statement of exactly what Cohen means to do in this album. It is just as fast as the title suggests, verging on the border between music and spoken word. But beneath Cohen’s growling vocals is a lingering groove, and couched in the reactionary statement of intent are beautiful lines like “I like to take my time/I like to linger as it flies/a weekend on your lips/a lifetime in your eyes.”

Cohen’s voice may be deeper than over (bordering on Tom Waits territory in places) but no matter what he sings about the words just flow out. His voice may be as rough and battered as an old leather jacket, but the worlds still flow like a silk gown when he wants them to. Each track showcases a man who knows exactly how powerful his voice can be, and how best to deploy it for maximum emotional resonance.

The supremely laconic Almost Like the Blues flows from being playfully topical (“there’s torture and there’s killing/there’s all my bad reviews”), to stark images of violence, never quite settling down and saying in precise, unequivocal terms what it all means.

The actual structure of each of the nine tracks on the album don’t deviate much from a pattern. Cohen’s leathery voice ploughs through lyrics that have only a tangential relationship to the simple, minimal jazz (or occasionally country) beat trudging along in the background them, with a female coming in for the occasional chorus. The whole thing is oddly effective for this minimalism, and at time feels like you could strip it back even further without robbing Cohen’s words and voice of any impact.

But within that there is an album that encompasses ruminations of age, death, war, suffering, love, loss, history… and that’s just scratching the surface. Samson in New Orleans and Born in Chains riff on religious imagery and a church hymn style structure, while You Got Me Singing unfolds itself with a deliberate patience into a bittersweet portrait of conflicting emotions (“You got me singing/like a prisoner in jail/you got me singing/like my pardon’s in the mail”).

The highpoint may be the meandering patter of Nevermind, which hums along with a cool, soothing flow, but which at the same time sings of an acceptance of a deep-rooted and undeniable anger – “This was your heart/this swarm of flies/this was once your mouth/this bowl of lies.”

Did I Ever Love You is possibly the only track that fails to hit its mark, which breaks into a poppy country and western romp on the chorus in a way that makes it feel like two different songs. One is another mournful ballad that fits just fine, but the other – said poppy chorus – sounds more like a bad cover version of a Cohen song that would just annoy you if you heard it on the radio.

But perhaps the fact that the album is so unafraid to make such awful missteps is just another example of a musician doing whatever he wants. Cohen lashes out the broad strokes of ‘Popular Problems’ with a bold confidence, but leaves more than enough space for the listener to wrap themselves up in the space between the lines and carve out their own interpretation.

This is an album about life. It is not necessarily to be seen as an old man’s perspective looking back, no more than it is an attempt to capture a young man’s voice. It is above all else a human album, at times harsh and cruel, at times frail and vulnerable, but always shot through with some essential core of meaning that forms an image of humanity reflected back at us.