Neil Young - Living with War
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Free Music Notes for Living with War
Free Music Review: God Bless Neil Young
Hit: 5 Stars
If Neil Young didn't write his own songs, you can be sure one of the covers on this album would've been the 1970 Edwin Starr classic "War." It seems that Mr. Young has expressed the same "What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" attitude in his latest and greatest anti-war saga aptly titled Living With War. Whether it was when he was part of Buffalo Springfield with their superb 1967 anti-Vietnam anthem "For What It's Worth" or his cohorts, Crosby, Still & Nash on the injustice of the four students murdered at Kent State University in 1970 on the brilliant and haunting lyrics of "Ohio," Young has never wavered from his beliefs or feared what anyone thinks. The nine original songs on this album are more than subtle - they are in-your-face anti-war and anti-Bush. One thing Young has made perfectly clear, he speaks and sings his mind whenever he gets the chance. On this, his 35th solo album, he doesn't just throw in a song or two, he has dedicated the entire set telling George W. Bush exactly what he thinks of him and his crooked administration. One can't help but wonder how the genius of Young works, especially since it's reported that he wrote these songs in two weeks and four of them on the same day of their recording! The first song that caught the attention of the public was "Let's Impeach The President" when it was leaked onto the internet two weeks prior to this album's release, with lyrics such as "Let's impeach the president for lying/Let's impeach the president for spying/Let's impeach the President for hijacking our religion and using it to get elected/Dividing our country into colors and still leaving black people neglected." This and every track is sung with such fervor and rocking anger, it makes you push your fist in the air and want to march to his beat. Other songs that will leave you hauntingly rocked are "After The Garden," "The Restless Consumer" (in which a chorus of 100 souls chant "Don't need no more lies" over and over), "Shock and Awe," while "Lookin' For A Leader" desperately cries out for someone sane to take over this country. Young knows he's out there as he warbles "Someone walks among us and I hope he hears the call/and maybe it's a woman or a black man after all." A friend of mine who sang in the choir on this album recently sent me an email and said, "Hands-down, the best moment of the day came while recording the final song. By that time, Young had left the console room entirely and was pacing around the studio, fully approving of our work. (And the adoration for him was always hovering like an aura.) The assembled choir was a combination of fatigued AND warmed up, and we were asked - one of the rare times that day - to break off into soprano-alto-tenor-bass parts for a bed of "oooohs" under some verses of a song written about a Vietnam vet. Loud, bombastic, beautiful oooooohs. But not right. And he coached us, `This is a song for someone who now lives in the wind.' And then he dimmed the lights, cued the tape playback, and I swear the sound was other-worldly." The final track is "America The Beautiful" with the choir singing this song somberly for our great nation. This album will lift you up, will make you angry and will make you do what so little music does today - it will make you think. God Bless America and God Bless Neil Young.Free Music Review: Go East, Young Man.
Hit: 5 Stars
Impressively produced, jazzed, and poignant, "Living With War" is more evidence that Neil Young is still a peace poet of considerable force. Forty years after playing "Sea of Madness" at Woodstock with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and 30 years after "Hawks and Doves," Young shows his heart is in the East and he continues his journey toward that point. The East is not so much a geographic place but the state of resembling the Biblical Patriarch Abraham, known in Jewish tradition as the one in the East who awoke righteousness.
Young's title track of "Living with War" contains an admirable call not to kill again. Good that he put this foot forward. Even better if people join the artist in his prayerful pledge.
"After The Garden" leads off the CD and hints at the Garden of Eden we all long for. It also sounds a bit like a prediction of economic collapse. Young seems to have put it out front because he knew we'd be dealing with economic as well as social turmoil for years resulting from blank-check war mongering.
"The Restless Consumer" has Young puncturing the questionable "needs" of what President Poppy Bush called the "non-negotiable American way of life." The lines of "Don't need no more boxes I can't see. Covered in flags but I can't see them on TV" work great irony when taken together with lines from "Flags of Freedom" - "Today's the day our younger son is going off to war...These must be the flags of freedom flyin."
"Shock and Awe" is another eye-opener about media-sanitized war. The artist jars us awake with strong words while floating on a wooden ship of regret -
"Thousands of children scarred for life
Millions of tears for a soldier's wife
Both sides are losing now. Heaven takes them in.
Thousands of children scarred for life.
We had a chance to change our mind
But somehow wisdom was hard to find
We went with what we knew and now we can't go back
But we had a chance to change our mind."
"Families" captures the scattered and jagged texture of modern existence. Young shows us a resting place that gets further and further away with each premature death at home (abortion etc.) and abroad.
"I see a light ahead. There's a chill wind blowing in my head.
I wish that I was home instead with my
Family."
"Let's Impeach the President" and "Lookin for a Leader" are the CDs weakest songs because of their odor of partisan politics and racial/gender "correctness." Yet "Lookin For a Leader" makes an important point about citizen engagement when it hints at looking beyond retail politics.
"He's walking here among us
And we've got to seek him out."
"Roger and Out" is metaphysical and deeply personal. It will eventually become a classic.
Young ends the disc with his own arrangement of "America The Beautiful." The famous appeal for "brotherhood from sea to shining sea" means to Young, through use of the 100-voice chorus, and should mean to us a circle from the Atlantic Coast going east through Europe/Africa/Asia, and coming through the Pacific and our West Coast across the Fruit Plane without interruption. We should all take up Neil Young's challenge to go East and not stop.
Free Music Review: From A Conservative Who Loves This Recording
Hit: 5 Stars
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.
Free Music Review: The Restless Neil Young Burns With Passion.......
Hit: 5 Stars
Neil Young has been recording for a LONG time. He has been part of Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, as well as a solo artist. He's been considered the "Godfather" of grunge by some in the music world. He has made songs in just about every genre-rock, folk, pop,country, and has even experimented with electronica. His songs have been covered by lots of artists as well. He has made great albums, good albums, and some that were uneven, and that's one reason I admire him as an artist, and he is an artist in the truest sense of the word-because he's not looking to make the same album over and over again. He doesn't care about the commercial aspect of his music. He just wants it OUT there. One thing for certain, though, he goes where his muse takes him. No one, let me repeat that, NO ONE, is better at expressing anger than Neil Young. He's written a lot of songs when he was angry-"Southern Man" and "Ohio" to name two. He's written two whole albums of angry songs-"On The Beach" and "Tonight's the Night." When 9-11 happened he wrote another angry song-"Let's Roll," his way of saying lets catch these creeps. "Living With War" is Neil's primal scream-rock 'n roll version. He is angry about how the war with Iraq is going, how the elected politicians are not looking out for the country, or us, how families are dealing with the enormous pressure of war. "Let's Impeach The President" opens with the lyrics "Let's impeach the President for lyin'/and misleading our country into war" and uses sound clips of President Bush's own statements in between the chorus of simply two words, repeated over and over--flip/flop. No question about where he stands! "The Restless Consumer" decries the selling of war, politicians, medicines, and the let's go shopping mentality (I'm guilty of this!) sold to us by advertisers, and we all buy it-and Mr. Young is almost yelling the chorus...."Don't need no more lies" I find the song thought-provoking and discomforting, perhaps because it hit a little too close to home. "Lookin' For A Leader" is about finding someone, anyone, to stand up for us. His criticism is pointed-one verse goes "Maybe it's Obama/but he thinks that he's too young/Maybe it's Colin Powell/to right what he's done wrong." The cd closes with a 100 member choir singing "America The Beautiful." The production is raw, with loud, fuzzy guitars, big percussion, and Neil's sometimes off-key voice. It sounds like a live recording. You can hear and feel the passion that went into this recording, and it burns red-hot! I highly recommend this to everyone-right, left, center, ambivalent, pro-war, anti-war, because he has written and performed this with such passion and force, it will make you think.Free Music Review: Living with War Indeed
Hit: 5 Stars
When historians look back at the 2006 mid-term election and want to figure out what was going through the mind of the American public as they decisively threw the Republican Party out of office, I hope that they listen to Neil Young's new album Living with War.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that tens of millions of American voters listened to this album and then went out and voted, but I do think that this album perfectly captures the mood of the country at this point and time. At times the album can be blistering in its criticism of George W. Bush as such songs as Let's Impeach the President and Shock and Awe leave little to the imagination of what Neil thinks of our President. But don't dismiss this album as an anti-Bush screed. Young also captures the yearning most Americans have for a leader, any leader, who will work to make this country better, and chides Americans for not demanding more from our leaders or holding them accountable for their actions.
Flags of Freedom is probably one of the most patriotic songs I have ever heard from a rocker. It describes an old time military parade full of new recruits on their way to war (presumably Iraq). Parents and family members watch proudly and with trepidation as their sons and daughters, husbands, and wives, brothers and sisters march off to war. However there is criticism directed to the rest of us who stayed behind and ignored what is happening in Iraq, as Young describes a sister who is there to watch her brother off to war but is then distracted by what is playing on a flat screen TV in a shop window. Finally in case you still don't get what Neil is trying to say on Living with War, he ends the album with a gospel choir version of America the Beautiful.
Apparently this album was put together in a couple of days and it shows in some places. It probably has the most DIY vibe on a major label album since Guided By Voices' Bee Thousand album. Also if you groove on Neil Young but don't care what the lyrics say, there still are a couple of classic Neil Young with Crazy Horse stompers here. On Neil's web site there are videos of Neil arranging the songs, which is also quite fascinating.
If you were excited by the election results this album is for you. If you were disappointed and angry about the outcome, listen to this album to get a better understanding of what many of your fellow Americans are feeling. If you love Neil Young's music, get this album. Finally if you are fascinated in seeing how a Hall of Fame rock and roll star can be both political and patriotic, angry and hopeful, irreverent and relevant, go out and get Living with War.