Customer Reviews

Living with War

5 star:		(176)
4 star:		(62)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(55)

 

 

This is electric Neil, not acoustic Neil.

I'm one of those people who is (I suppose) middle of the road and when i heard about this album was interested in how Neil would deliver his 'message'. Well, it's direct. Brutally so.

[...]

Shock and Awe is an all time classic Neil song (think Rockin in the Free World on steroids). Bank on that. The Restless Consumer is another great song. Families is a toe tapper. Let's Impeach the President is, well, a pretty decent song (musically a cousin to Powderfinger) but the lyrics are -well wow (Flip/Flop). Listen yourself. There are very few weak moments on this album. This isn't Harvest, Rust or Everybody Knows - but it's a good CD if you like electric Neil.

As someone wrote earlier, this may be the best protest 'album' ever recorded. It is sure to elicit some type of response from you, positive or negative. That's why it gets 5 stars. I highly recommend this album.

If you ever (even if just for a brief moment) think this country is going back to the days of "no taxation without representation", you should listen to this - even if just to admire what someone can do with his art with first amendment protection.

Unlike the brave "A Kids Review", I think we're all capable of knowing this is Neil's perception - not the person reading this (or writing it for that matter).

Living With War begins with Neil Young singing that we "won't need no shadow men running the government, won't need no stinking war". Angry, emotional words, but this is the most joyous and beautiful angry album I've ever heard.

This is truly an "Ohio" moment, and Living With War strikes a chord that will resonate with the millions of Americans who've tossed off their blinders and who see that this administration hijacked 9/11 for its own twisted political agenda. Now here we are mired in one disastrous war, watching this unpopular administration apparently trying to sell us another, just in time for an election.

Living With War is brilliant and inspiring on many levels: musically, politically, but also as a case study in guerrilla marketing and public relations. A couple of weeks ago word began to leak out that Neil Young, a proud and patriotic Canadian American whom many identify as conservative, was about to release a new song titled "Let's Impeach the President (For Lying)." Faster than you could say 'right-wing blogosphere' Young was in the media gun sights of pro-Bush, pro-war pundits rhetorically blasting him. Of course, none of these critics had heard the song, much less the entire Living With War album.

And what an album it is. It comes wrapped in a plain brown wrapper, but it bleeds red, white and blue. "When the night falls, I pray for peace.... I never bow to the thought police... I'm living with war in my heart and my mind" sings Young. Neil and his PR guerrillas played the attacks brilliantly, parlaying them into perhaps the largest virtual stage and audience that any rocker has ever had to blast out the release of what is Neil's most compelling and timely album.

The seventh song on the album is the one that brought the attacks that set the stage for today's unprecedented web launch. Here is part of what Neil has to say:
"Let's impeach the president for lying and misleading our country into war. Abusing all the power that we gave him... The White House shills who hide behind closed doors and bend the facts to fit with their news stories of why we had to send our men to war... Let's impeach the president for spying on citizens inside their own homes.... Tapping our computers and telephones.... What if Al Qaida blew up the levees? Sheltered by our government's protection, would New Orleans have been safer that way? Or was someone just not home that day?"

This rousing, upbeat song is backed by a hundred voice choir, as is much of the album, and is filled with audio clips of President Bush's 'flip flops' and false and misleading claims, snipped from news conferences and speeches. This song is a showtune anthem. The entire album is a pro-American, pro-family, pro-troops challenge to citizens in the United States, Neil's adopted homeland, to get it together and make change happen.

On Restless Consumer Neil targets the American addiction to oil and materialism, relating it to the war and to the greater failure to attack problems of poverty: "How do you pay for war and leave us dying? ... Don't need no Madison Avenue War. .... Don't need no more lies."

Shock and Awe is one the best rock anthems Neil has ever penned or played: "Back in the days of shock and awe.... history was a cruel judge of overconfidence ... Back in the days of mission accomplished our chief was landing on the deck. The sun was setting on the golden photo op. Thousands of bodies in the ground brought home in boxes to a trumpet sound. No one sees them coming home that way.... We had a chance to change our mind, but somehow wisdom was hard to find..."

Looking for a Leader calls out for people to arise "to reunite the red white and blue ... clean up the corruption and make the country strong. Someone walks among us and I hope he hears the call; maybe it's a woman, or a black man after all. Maybe its Obama, but he thinks he's too young. Maybe its Colin Powell, to right what he's done wrong. ... America is beautiful but she has an ugly side. We're looking for a leader... ."

Living With War builds from beginning to end, proudly pro-American, pro-troops, pro-freedom, while vehemently anti-war and anti-Bush. The lyrics are inspired; the music is classic, and the 100-voice choir warm and emotional. Some of the songs are about US soldiers, one dead from the war on Vietnam and the other Iraq. The Iraq vet in Families says: "there's a universe between us now, but I want to reach out and tell you how much you mean to me. ... I'm going back to the USA, I just got my ticket today."

In Roger and Out a living friend reflects on his long dead buddy from the 1960s: "Tripping down that old hippie highway, got to thinking about you again. Wondering how it really was for you, and how it happened in the end. ... We were just a couple of kids then, living each and every day, when we both went down to register, we were laughing all the way. ... I feel you in the air today. I know you gave for your country, roger and out good buddy."

Living With War closes appropriately with America the Beautiful, the hundred-voice choir providing the perfect closure to one of the strongest and certainly the most-brilliantly released calls for peace and justice ever from a musician of Young's stature. In releasing Living With War as he has, Young is clearly challenging his artistic peers, fellow patriots and all of us.

Getting close to dying tends to sharpen your focus. First the elegiatic paean to his father, PRAIRIE WIND, and his tour de force concert film, HEART OF GOLD, and now the most revved up, furiously infuriated rock record since FREEDOM (he must love the Bush family), finds Young in a more defiant mood than he's been in since, well, Papa Bush. The result is incendiary. Working with Chad Cromwell and Rick Rosas, as he did in FREEDOM, Young let's loose like a metal version of Phil Ochs with songs that on occasion are slogan-riddled ("Impeach", "Looking For a Leader") that would not have been out of place on I'M NOT MARCHING ANYMORE. But there are also some extraordinarily superb Young compositions that sit with his very best, as well as with anything on Ochs' PLEASURES OF THE HARBOUR: most notably, "After the Garden is Gone", "No More Lies", "The Days of Shock and Awe" and "the Flags of Freedom (Dylan references included)."
The CD closes with an absolute masterpiece in the "Cortez the Killer" vein: "Roger and Out" says more by suggestion than anything Young justifiably shakes his fist about in all that precedes it. If you have ever lost a friend to war, this is a little too close to the bone. I'd even swear Neil knew what he was talking about. If you were ever afraid you might lose someone to this war in particular, this will upset you. Almost funereal, the CD closes with the choir intoning "America the Beautiful." Is it for thee I weep?
The recording sounds quite immediate and raw, but that's Neil anyway. The trumpet, the choir, the urgency throughout all speak to the way a somnambulent America needs to wake up out of its torpor. The tar flats are gathering around the Yank heels and you don't even need a Canadian to tell you that. To paraphrase Ross Perot, that sound you're hearing is your future getting swallowed in debt to the Chinese and the Arabs. You got stuck with the bill for the lies of Cheney, Rumsfled and Pinocchio. Was there ever a leader who deserved a particular fate? But that's up to you folks. That trumpet is playing taps.
All in all, with a revived Stephen Stills regaining his edge and compositional skills, one can only hope that this summer's Freedom of Speech Tour (albeit a few years late) awakens a political fervor long lost to self indulgence among a generation of a certain age. Certainly Crosby has been extolling the courage of those who stand up against tyranny for ever, and perhaps even Nash will find a way to harden his act and deliver something worthy of the man who wrote "Chicago" and "Military Madness."

Great music with an inspiring message. Neil stresses that America is a wonderful country, but that it currently has an ugly side. Neil wants the USA to be a truly free, compassionate nation, led by people (not necessarily just white males) with integrity. Neil is sincere and constructive in the messages of his lyrics; he is not America-bashing. Some of the people who rate the album one star reject "yet another Hollywood or rock star" getting political. Since when are they supposed to keep their mouths shut? All of us are entitled to free speech, provided we steer clear of libel, slander, and defamation of character. Rock on, Neil... kudos to you for taking a stand. Others are free to disagree with you, but you and everyone else ought to be free to express opinions about our leaders and our nation's policies.

This is in response to this guy: "Breaking News: Grandpa Disapproves Of The President!, May 10, 2006" Just one question, why are you taking time out of your busy stereotyping, freedom bashing, namecalling, fox news loving, "either with us or your against us" world to insult people who read your review? Uh, let's see, because your an idiot? I guess it works for me too. Do you have the guts to call our President wrong? Or do you just sit by and say, "it's OK, he meant well". Listen pal, the world is NOT black and white, protest songs ARE freedom of speech and if people want to hear them, let them! Canada is not a state, it's a country. Neil Youngs interest and knowledge of American politics and culture probably exceeds your own. This release is more than one song about impeaching our President. If you actually listened to the other songs, you might find that he takes a critical look at our culture and writes about what he sees. So, Keep on rockin' Neil! This paperbagged piece of democracy is worth every penny.

I must admit to have grown somewhat bored of Neil Young's recorded output over the past couple of decades. However, Living With War does one thing that the former CDs didn't do. It is keeping me coming back to play it again and again. When this album was originally streamed on the net, I would return over and over to hear a particular song that was playing in my head. I always ended up playing the entire album.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what has grabbed me. One thing is that Young's guitar, ragged as it still is, has so much more invention and melody than I've heard before. The guitar sparkles and rages, always fitting perfectly within the songs - the solos are never too much or too little, just perfect cues to the finale of the song. The other attribute is Neil's voice, overpowering the words so that you don't have to decipher them to understand the artists' POV. It's not so much rage, as has widely been described, but a feeling of hope and optimism. Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but it is true. This album is not only musical, not only does it rock, but it leaves me feeling hopeful and rejuvenated.

Let me say this first and foremost, the last song is the best. The fact that Neil can play it straight up says a lot about where his heart is, and which is also a telling sign about what I think he's saying in a lot of these songs.

As an Canadian-American (I deliberately say this tongue in cheek) Neil's entitled to his opinion. Of course for many of those opinions I find myself 180 degrees to the right. As an artist he's entitled to infuse as many of those opinions into as much of his music as he likes, just as I am entitled to accept (like) or reject (dislike) the sum total of the product.

I like the product because, yes, I love it when Neil plays his axe angrily. Secondarily, I like Neil's earnestness. His musical partners (CSN)make me laugh anymore when they try to be topical. Drippy is all I can say. The irony to me is how so many who disavow God are so GD "preachy" about it. Neil on the other hand exudes righteous anger and I respect that.

The best moments for me:

- the way the music rises in "Living With War" to the lyrics:

The Rockets Red Glare
Bombs Bursting in Air
Give Proof Through The Night
That Our Flag Is Still There

(The fact is all of us are "Living With War," and feel its hurts, and want it to end, so that we can truly live in Peace. I suspect lots of other reviewers posting on this music would disagree with me about what that really means.)

- the stanza from "Families"

I'm goin' back to the USA
I just got my ticket today
I can't wait to see you again in the
USA

(Families torn asunder by war create massive longing and I respect the way Neil salutes the brave men and women sacrificing for the rest of us.)

- all of Flags of Freedom because a love of Bob Dylan (another god fearing and loving soul) is something that really is a bond between me and my kids.

- the end of Looking For A Leader

Looking for a leader
With The Great Spirit on his side

Someone walks among us
And I hope he hears the call
And maybe it's a woman
Or a black man afterall

(There is an underlying implication that Righteousness ordained by a higher power is what makes a person a leader...otherwise why would a person have to hear the call. Lincoln said it best when asked if God was on his side, saying he thought it more important to figure out how to be on God's side.)

- Roger and Out

good buddy


- America The Beautiful

Only God can bless a country where dissent is so openly accepted, because men are so damn spiteful and they prefer to quash it. Left or Right. Makes no difference.

America is The Beautiful Place To Be. And Neil knows it. That he sees some of the details differently from me -- well that's a big so what in my estimation. We have a lot in common. God Bless Neil.

The good news is a performer of note finally put our anger, disgust and frustration to music with powerful lyrics and has preserved our thoughts and feelings for future generations.

"Maybe it's Colin Powell...to right what he's done wrong." Neil has documented forever what happens when a good man does not speak out.

This album is loud and sloppy. Under-rehearsed and under-produced. Same three or four chords. Occasionally simplistic and naive. Above all, heartfelt and passionate. In other words, a classic Neil Young record.

As a lifelong Neil Young fan, it's difficult to believe that anyone claiming to be a fan is surprised and turned off by Neil's direction on this one. Neil's frequently played around with his persona, but his songs have always been pro-humanity, pro-environment, pro-justice and pro-peace. Maybe some people just listened to the chorus of songs like "Rockin' in the Free World" and didn't pay attention to the rest of the song (much as many people misinterpreted Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.").

There's no mistaking Neil's angle this time. He's PO'd, and tired of being fed a steady diet of manipulative sloganeering, not unlike a lot of people. Neil is in the fortunate position of being able to plug in, turn up and give voice to this frustration.

It works. Songs such as "After the Garden," "Let's Impeach the President," and the title track rank up there with Neil's rawk classics "Cinnamon Girl," "Hey Hey My My," and the aforementioned "Rockin' in the Free World." The closing track, a simple gospel arrangement of "America the Beautiful" is understated and moving: Even the most ardent lefty will find his inner patriot and sing along.

Neil Young, the Canadian citizen, has based himself in the U.S.A. for 40 years. He has enriched our culture with his music. He has contributed to our economy by recording here, hiring American musicians, buying property (and protecting the wildlife on it), and paying taxes. His wife and kids are American citizens. Neil Young, the Canadian, has done more for American farmers, disabled and underprivileged than anyone in Washington. He's paid his dues, and can say what he wants. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Roger and out.

Musically, this is a good though not great album. Politically, it expresses how literally tens of millions of Americans have been feeling for some time now, but with the corporate-owned and controlled right-wing media (which loves to hawk theories about the so-called "liberal" media) squelching the anger many Americans are feeling, Neil Young has been able to give voice to how so many of us believe. By all accounts, this album was recorded very quickly, but it does not for all that show signs of having been rushed to press. Young has never been a studio wonk, polishing and fine-tuning his songs. There has always been a delightful rough-hewn quality to his work, and that is evident here. The songs are performed by Young, a power trio, a trumpet, and a hundred-voice choir. Young typically produces either "plugged" or "unplugged" albums, in the former having been one of the major influences on grunge, punk, and indie rock, while in the latter a major influence on alt-country and folk rock. This is definitely one of his "plugged" albums, with Neil playing his guitar at its distorted best. Leaving aside the political content, the music on the album isn't as strong as on his best albums. This is considerably below ZUMA or TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT or RUST NEVER SLEEPS, but it is not one of his weaker albums. I would compare it to FREEDOM or WELD or RAGGED GLORY.

Most of the songs are at least good, but two I thought were extraordinary, both musically and in content. "Shock and Awe" is vintage Neil Young, solidified by hard-driving guitar and the kind of basic but compelling melody that Young has turned out a hundred times in his remarkable career. The lyrics are the most memorable on the disc, evoking some of the more embarrassing memories of the past three years, first the absurdity of the "shock and awe" campaign to open the war, followed by the humiliating display of Bush landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln (with banner made by the White House, but which they claim was made by personnel on the carrier) and declaring "Mission Accomplished," the thousands of Iraqi children who have suffered because of our military invasion and occupation, and the caskets that have returned during the Pentagons moratorium on any photos taken of their return. It is a string of heartbreaking images that condemns the White House for a string of misdoings. But the final verse is the hardest to hear, because it condemns us, the American people, for our failings in the 2004 election:

[...]

History is always going to ponder the fact that we reelected Bush with disbelief.

The song that has gotten the most attention before the album's release is "Let's Impeach the President." It is a rousing rocker that opens with a trumpet playing taps immediately before Neil plunges in:

[...]

The verses are all intensely angry (as should any thinking American), but the most damning section for Bush is the instrumental break that plays a string of recordings of Bush building his own case for impeachment. Out of Bush's own mouth he is condemned, including such famous instances of nonsense as "War is my last choice" and accusations that Saddam was behind 9/11 and harbored terrorists.

There are several other excellent songs on the album, such as the lovely "Families" and "Looking for a Leader," which expresses the hope that we can find someone decent to lead our country (something that I have heard from my friends on the Right as well as those from the Left-the nation's dirty little secret is that apart from Christian Fundamentalists, few even on the Right really like Bush). The only song that leaves me really flat is the choir's singing "America the Beautiful" to end the disc. I appreciate the sentiment, but musically it seems a bit dull compared with what went before.

Much is being made by the Right and the Pundits that Neil Young is Canadian. While this is true, it is also true that he has resided in California since the sixties, though he also has a home in Canada. It completely escapes me what relevance his being of Canadian origin and a part-time resident has to anything. Do the sentiments on this album reflect how tens of millions of Americans feel? Absolutely. Are the political beliefs expressed well founded? Definitely. There is already overwhelming evidence that Bush misled the American people to get us to invade Iraq, that they ignored the substantial amount of evidence that there were neither WMDs nor WMD programs in Iraq, and the evidence continues to mount. If the Democrats take the House in 2006 and Bush's war actions get investigated, the evidence could well explode. So, instead of repeatedly making mention of Neil's ties to our neighbor to the North, perhaps the pundits should ask: 1) does his album tap into widespread national sentiments (it does) and 2) is he justified in his anger (again, he is).

Political leaders throughout American history, from Jefferson to Thoreau to Teddy Roosevelt, have emphasized that the highest form of patriotism has been protest when the nation or its leaders have departed from the nation's ideals. At few points in American history have the ideals upon which the nation was founded been so thoroughly compromised by our leadership as at the present, with charges of torture, secret prisons for illegally holding detainees, imperialism, and military domination directed at the United States by the international community. Most of the world views the United States as a greater threat to international peace than the terrorists we claim to be trying to root out. Domestically, we have an administration that has consistently tried to squelch dissent, engaged in illegal wiretapping, and promulgated an agenda that has harmed the vast majority of Americans.

My outrage is not directed at people like Neil Young who has had the courage to speak out against a corrupt administration. My outrage is directed at those who refuse to get as mad as he is.