It seemed so incongruous, the 74-year-old architect of some of modern music's most dour and downbeat popular songs of love and hate skipping across the stage like some kid. But there he was, Leonard Cohen, performing last Tuesday in the first of two nights in the darkened Chicago Theatre as part of his first international tour in more than a decade, with his molasses voice sounding almost identical to his later recordings.

"It's been a long time since I stood on this stage, 14 or 15 years," Cohen said between songs. "I was 60 years old then, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I've taken a lot of Prozac."

Funny line. And it was almost word-for-word the same as a crack he made for the audience on his latest album, Live in London, recorded in July 2008. But the re-run joke fits into a larger point, which is that unlike other troubadours traveling America -- ahem, Bob Dylan and Van Morrison -- Cohen fans know what they're going to get when they attend these shows. That is, faithful reproductions of many of Cohen's most beloved studio recordings spanning most of his career.

In between songs at the Chicago, the audience was greeted with that most rare specimen, the humble artist, who frequently knelt down when he sang, removed his hat when other performers did solos, and told the crowd he was genuinely glad for all their support over the years. Their response was evident in the vanishingly few open seats in the crowd.