Neil Young
Living With War (Reprise)
In May 1970, within days of the National Guard killing four student protestors at Kent State University, Neil Young wrote “Ohio,” cut it with Crosby, Stills & Nash, and had it on radio and in stores immediately thereafter. At SXSW 2006, someone suggested to Young that these equally war-torn times demanded another “Ohio,” and two months later, Living With War delivers nine new protests and a gospel-bound “America the Beautiful.” Both the choir and Young’s Crazy Horse-acting trio are remnants of last year’s Prairie Wind, and if Living With War isn’t to Prairie Wind what Ragged Glory was to Freedom in Bush Sr.’s day – epic power chords born from pinpoint acoustics and “Rockin’ in the Free World” – it’s not because its author isn’t rightly pissed off. Unfortunately, War‘s title track is stillborn, and while its backup, “The Restless Consumer,” is a highlight, the shadowing choir on both is superfluous given Young’s still-crystalline voice. Meanwhile, “Flags of Freedom,” which begs for such grandeur, fumbles it. “Shock & Awe,” with its mariachi trumpet, like opener “After the Garden” and penultimate and poignant closer “Roger and Out,” distinguishes War, yet like the rest of the undercooked LP, could have used another pass at the lyrics. The trumpet’s brief “Taps” intro to “Let’s Impeach the President,” which should have been the title track with its celebrated “flip/flop” sound bites from the First Monkey, may be all the “Ohio” needed. That and its lyric “What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees? Would New Orleans have been safer that way – sheltered by our government’s protection? Or was someone just not home that day?” Living With War: American Idiot for hippies. 
This article appears in May 19 • 2006.
