Recorded in six days and rushed out – first on the ‘net and now as an album release proper – Neil Young’s 32nd album is without a doubt his most controversial. It certainly doesn’t get any more direct than ‘Let’s Impeach The President’ (“for lyin’ and misleading his country to war”), the key track here and the one that’s drawn him the most flak from predictable quarters in the US.
But there’s much more to Living With War than Bush-bashing – it’s a state of the union address or a “metal folk protest” as he describes it, designed to jolt the nation out of what he sees as a complacency over the Iraq war.
Whether it’ll have the desired effect, only time will tell but he’s rarely if ever been as passionate as he is on these songs. And he’s truly fired-up right from the opener, ‘After The Garden’ where he declares, “Won’t need no stinkin’ war”.
“Thousands of children scarred for life/Millions of tears for a soldier’s wife,” he wails on ‘Shock and Awe’ which boasts a vaguely similar melody to his Rust Never Sleeps classic ‘Hey Hey My My’. ‘Flags Of Freedom’ describes the confusion in a young girl’s mind watching her soldier brother parade through town before heading off to Iraq.
His ire isn’t always directed at America: “Don’t want no damned Jihad blowin’ themselves away in my hood”, Young sings on ‘Restless Consumer’, which has a vocal part eerily reminiscent of the “bullwhips cracking” passage on ‘Southern Man’. It’s not just a parade of polemics – these are genuinely great songs for the most part boasting the kind of melodies that seemed to have deserted him on much of his recent output and the sound is the familiar Crazy Horse bluster – all distorted guitars, thundering drums with a ragged live feel and Young’s falsetto, sometimes struggling to be heard above the din. Recruiting a 100-strong choir was an inspired decision and lifts what might have been another collection of raw, crusty rockers into another realm.
Unquestionably his best album since Freedom or Harvest Moon – depending on whether you like your Neil Young hard-rocking or gently folksy – Living With War is protest music at its most potent.