Cohen's five reclusive years in the Mt. Baldy Zen Center colour the lonesome, hermetic ambience of Ten New Songs, a spare, yet affecting, collaboration with soothing R&B singer Sharon Robinson. Cohen is a man of constant struggle in songs like "That Don't Make It Junk" and "Here It Is", which almost serve as secular-tinged tutorials in Buddhist beliefs concerning the constancy of change and suffering, all sung in the senior citizen's holy groan.