"Impeach the President": Neil Young's "Living With War" earns another rave
Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 12:00:46 PM PDT
Cirile does a lot to allay my biggest concern about the album: that it might cross over into dreariness and pomposity, or be a little too-old school to garner popular appeal. On the contrary, Cirile thinks the album will appeal to the same audience that made Green Day's anti-Bush album "American Idiot" a hit:
On Friday, April 21, 2006, Justice Through Music was invited to a secret preview of the entire CD at Reprise Records Burbank headquarters. At 7:30 pm, a small cadre of people were ushered into a special listening room, and for the next 50 minutes, listen we did.
Let's get one thing out of the way right now: this album rocks. It's post '80s electric Neil Young at his grunge best, and of the 10 cuts on Living With War, the first eight are mostly uptempo rockers. In fact, this may be the 60-year-old Young's most crossover-worthy album yet, since many of the songs should appeal to fans of bands as diverse as Green Day and Pearl Jam and will likely be embraced on campuses across America.
But there's one other tiny thing that makes this record stand out: it is one motherfucker of a protest album. In fact, Living With War may just be the Fahrenheit 9/11 of rock.
I was born several years after Neil released "Ohio." Though I'm a huge fan of his and certainly appreciate the song, it's never hit me in the visceral way of his proto-grunge work. The Neil who wrote "Ohio" wouldn't appeal to people my age as much as the Neil who wrote "Rockin' in the Free World." If the sound is in the vane that Cirile suggests, this album will have a chance of drawing a bigger audience than hardcore Neil fans and motivated Bush skeptics.
Cirile then breaks down the album song by song:
The album kicks off with the tight wistful rocker, "After the Garden." Its strong hook sets the tone by hearkening back to Woodstock--remember what we were fighting for in the '60s, folks? It's all been dashed. Next up: "Living With War," a good cut that had toes tapping. But the room really came alive with the third cut, "Restless Consumer," a headbanging indictment of both American consumerism and the manipulation of the public by the corporate media. Young breaks into an almost rap-style rant in the choruses, with the refrain, "We don't need no more lies!"
But Cirile reserves his highest praise for the album's signature song, "Impeach the President." Brilliantly, Neil uses Bush's own words to condemn him. And it sounds like we'll never think of those hideous "flip flop" chants from the 2004 Republican National convention the same way again:
But Young kicks out the proverbial jams with the album's centerpiece, "Let's Impeach the President." This song is a blistering, barnstorming indictment of our Commander-in-Thief, and Young borrows a page from Michael Moore here by letting Bush destroy himself with his own words. In the song's midsection, Bush's own recorded contradictory statements are juxtaposed against one another to create an incontrovertible pastiche of lies and contradictions while the background singers chant, "Flip... Flop... Flip... Flop..." Incendiary. The CD is worth buying for this one song alone.
Over on the right-wing blogs and Fox News -- where this album seems to be making a much bigger splash than on Kos and other liberal activist sites -- much has been made of Neil's Canadian background, as if biography can trump his ideas. Perhaps as a rebuttal to such predictable attacks, or more likely as an expression of passion and love of American ideals, Neil ends the album with what amounts to a plea to a restored America. Also, he appears to be a big Obama fan.
The tone grows wistful again (but with a ray of hope) in "Looking for a Leader," in which Young hopes someone, anyone, will step up to clean out the corruption--"Maybe it's Obama, but he thinks that he's too young... Maybe it's a woman, or a black man after all..." The CD finally downshifts with the tender, slower "Roger and Out," a look back on the "old hippie highway" and the fresh and perhaps naïve ideals of youth. Finally, Young closes with a showstopper--a full choral version of "America the Beautiful," featuring a 100-person choir. No gimmicks here--it is simply a traditional and deeply moving rendition of the song which, after the rest of Living With War, making it quite clear that Young not only loves America, but wants to see it returned to its former glory.
Cirile ends with a plea for everyone to buy this album, which he sees as fitting into the greatest traditions of rock-and-roll rebellion:
Says Reprise's Dan Rose, "We prefer to let the music speak for itself," and that it does--in volumes. If you're a fan of Young's, buy this. If you're not, consider buying it anyway. Young is saying out loud what most of America is feeling right now and what the corporate media refuses to allow to be said. Rock and roll at its best has always been about rebellion. And just in time, Living With War gives it to us in spades.
What to make of Neil and the advance buzz on this album? He may never unseat Dylan as the quintessential American (North American?) artist, but unlike Dylan, Neil has remained consistently iconoclastic, productive, and rebellious. His 2003 "Greendale" album sounded out the themes that come up in "Living With War." Neil has been prolific, never afraid to take risks and fail, or draw the ire of his fans and critics. He's the most fearless artist and musician I know; reading that he's bringing that fearlessness into today's politics is thrilling.
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