Neil Young's "Living with War"

An effusive American press bloc has embraced Neil Young as the country's latest anti-war hero after getting a whif of his latest album, "Living With War", in which ol' shaky laments living under the Bush Administration, and, strangely enough, living with the moral-weight of the Iraq war on his back. The Ghost has always been impressed by Young's Jekyll and Hyde musical output, where he's able to jump between rusty, distorted guitar, and introspective country balladeer without missing a beat.

So The Ghost's been looking forward to wrapping his ears around "Living with War", which has been described as one as the most unproduced and rawkus albums to have been released in recent memory. And I have to admit that on first spin it was all a little underwhelming. The production was so loose it was barely-there, with Young's voice fading in and out ad nauseam, drowning in the 100 strong choir he throws behind (and often in front) of him and his band. But as the albums rocks and lurches towards its conclusion you begin to realise you're not listening to something that's was created as a polished musical opus (it is in no way polished), but instead should probably be viewed as a passionate commentary on this new-world paradigm the US has, in part, created in the last five years. Young wrote and recorded "Living with War" in a couple of weeks during April, and the product is an album that's full of vitriol and lyrics , whose targets move quickly between the war in Iraq, the wire-tapping scandal and Bush's insidious Christianity.

When viewed in this light, Young's shrill, drowning vocals sound more like impassioned and desperate wails than some lazy ramblings from a man who forgot to bring his sound engineer. Good fucking on him I say. "Living with War" is a powerful recorded broadside to the Bush administration that hits with a thud. It wouldn't have the same effect on paper. It's kind of like when, earlier this month, James Wood, writing in The New Republic,
asked whether comedian Stephen Colbert's stand-up routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner was actually funny. Here's a highlight:

Obviously enough, this is designed not to amuse, but to wound, to goad, to irritate. It is not comedy; the discourse has moved location, from the funhouse to the church, and it has become preachy and a little earnest.

As you can probably guess from the above quote, Wood's answer was largely no, not really, but that Colbert wasn't trying to be funny; he was trying to make a point. "Living with War" fits into the same category. And like Colbert's performance, Young's new album doesn't provide all that many chuckles along the way.