Album Review: Living With War

NEIL YOUNG
Living With War
Reprise, 2006

A lot of the sixties rockers have survived. Big-time. Survivors of the first order. Paul and Ringo are still around. So are the Rolling Stones. Once the best damn rock 'n roll band in the world and the bad boys of rock they are now more befitting of the title of the oldest rockers on the touring circuit. Dylan is kicking turf in local baseball stadiums on his never ending world tour. Paul Simon harmonizing. The Who are now just two. Like Led Zep. And Neil Young rolls on, regardless.

Neil Young. Gone are the Buffalo Springfield days. And the days of CSNY. S and Y. Gone too those days when Neil Young played with Crazy Horse. Now it is just Neil Young. Even the thirtieth aniversary show for Dylan's back pages and Pearl Jam have been left behind.

But Neil Young still rocks - if you don't believe me listen to Living With War for proof - thre's something very comforting about the album - "I know it's only rock 'n roll but I like it" - it's because it sounds like it's straight out of the sixties but without the urgency of that time to create classics - so the songs end up sounding mellow and soft but the guitar is still rough, the drums still pound, the melody is still there, the bass booms and the lead is predictaby simple. and best of all the lyrics are as protest and folksy as they should be. It's like going down memory lane and reliving the good ole days when the system was something that we all believed we could beat.

It's not a surprise that the album along with Springsteen's tribute to Seeger should have had much success. They're riding the wave of nostalgia.

I have to quote but there are too many memorable lines to choose from. The titles themselves speak loudly. After the Garden. Living with War. The Restless Consumer. Shock and Awe. Families. Let's Impeach the President. Flags of Freedom. Looking for a Leader. Roger and Out. America the Beautiful - yes, the hymn. And yes again, the titles tell us the whole story.

Song after song pounds and drives its way into our ears - sounding similar to one another but still enjoyable.

Neil Young pays an expected tribute to Bob Dylan in Flags of Freedom. Echoes of "chimes of freedom flashing", naturally.

"Sister has her headphones on
She hears the music blasting
She sees her brother marching by
Their bond is everlasting
Listening to Bob Dylan singing in 1963
Watching the flags of freedom flying
She sees the president speaking
On the flat screen TV
In the window of the old appliance store
She turns to see her brother again
But he's already walking past
The flags of freedom flying
Can't you see the flags of freedom?
What colour are they now?
Do you think that you believe in yours
More than they do theirs somehow?
These must be the flags of freedom flyin' "

Followed by - you guessed it - the harmonica.

Not much one can add to that - except perhaps to remember what the reference was about - Martin Luther King and his dream - Dylan and Joan Baez singing, me thinking: "where have all the flowers gone?" - "how green was my valley?" - "oh when will they ever learn? - oh when will they ever learn?*"

It doesn't matter any longer so long as the protests songs keep ringin' - and I can't think of one song on this album I don't like though none of them really stand out - which is pretty impressive for such an old codger - old is sure wise, at any rate. He knows how to keep it simple. Hearken, ye young stupids who are imitators of ye oulde rock 'n' roll gods...

like the chimes of freedom flashin'
like the flags of freedom flyin'
after all, the cause is dead but it's not forgotten.

And yeah, to end - it's not a great album, you say, "but I lahk it."

* Dylan and Baez didn't sing this song or quote that novel but the performance was in that spirit and so the present writer has taken the liberty of doing a little Imagineering here.

-AV Koshy