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“Heard Neil Young sing about her...” and it ain’t Alabama this time. Ol’ Neil puts down the current administration with songs like “Let’s Impeach the President” on “Living With War.” It gets a little old after a while.
Review: Neil Young bores on ‘Living With War’
I like Neil Young’s music. I have about a dozen of his albums, from “Harvest” to “Harvest Moon” to “Sleeps With Angels” and beyond. As far as I was concerned, ol’ Neil never wrote a bad song. Until now.
His newest album, “Living With War,” comes on the heels of the hit documentary “Heart of Gold” that profiles the singer/songwriter’s courage as he approached a potentially life-threatening brain aneurysm. Rather than sit around feeling sorry for himself, Young headed to the studio, where he recorded eight songs just a day before going into surgery.
He survived, of course, and is now in good health. I haven’t heard the result of that now-famous session (last year’s critically acclaimed “Prairie Wind”) but I assume it is better than “War.” It would almost have to be.
“Living With War,” as you could probably guess from the title, is a blatantly political statement about our current state of affairs, both nationally and internationally. You can probably also guess that Young does not favor the current political climate — one quick look at the titles of the songs shows exactly where his politics lie. Songs like “Looking for a Leader” and “Let’s Impeach the President” don’t mince words.
And yet, paradoxically, they don’t say much either. From the first track to the last, it’s the same droning message — the war is wrong, the president is wrong, ad infinitum.
Not that I don’t agree with it — Young and I share most of the same views. But I just can’t help but chalk up the message of this album to the same bland preaching to the choir that happens in Michael Moore documentaries. It gets tiresome hearing something over and over again that I already know and agree with. Son Volt did a much better job of bashing Bush on the 2005 release “Okemah and the Melody of Riot,” with songs like “Jet Pilot,” a thinly-veiled, allegorical tale of George Bush’s life. Another track on that album somehow prophesied Dick Cheney’s hunting mishap - Robber baron ghettoes before us now/ everybody needs a hunting pal.
Still, the bland, “beating-you-over-the-head” message of this album would all be forgiven if it were a rousing rock masterpiece, full of melodic anthems like “Like a Hurricane” and “Cinnamon Girl.” Instead, Young himself often sounds bored as he lurches from one monotonous rock and roll sermon to the next. The musicianship brings to mind his recent concept album “Greendale,” but that one was saved by a great closing anthem, and by the fact that he spun an interesting yarn through the songs.
“War” has neither of those elements. Neil Young is no Bob Dylan. He’s no political apologist either. He’s a great rock and roller, a phenomenal guitar player, and a pretty dang good songwriter when it comes to subjects he knows something about. He should stick to them.
