CD REVIEW

Rush to 'War' pays off for Young

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, April 28, 2006

Neil Young - perhaps rock's most impulsive '60s rock veteran, and one of the very few to remain relevant — reportedly headed into the studio with a rhythm section, trumpet player and a 100-voice choir to write and record a rock album aimed at President Bush and the war in Iraq.

He did it in nine days — never let it be said the old hippie's not focused when he wants to be — and there's even an Austin connection. At South by Southwest, when conference organizer Roland Swenson introduced Young, this year's keynote speaker, he mentioned the impact of the song "Ohio," Young's tune about the Kent State shootings.

"Mr. Young," Swenson said, "we need another song."

Ask and ye shall receive. Here are 10 songs, and yes, Neil fans, the crunch is back.

Straightforward to the point of hamfistedness, enraged yet eternally optimistic, "Living With War" contains Young's liveliest music in years, his guitar swinging with all the roar and swagger of his legendary 1990 comeback-with-feedback "Ragged Glory," but without any of that album's jammy blowouts. You can hear "War" at neilyoung.com, and it will be digitally released May 2 with CDs to follow soon after.

Detractors will see this as Young simply boiling down complicated issues to inelegant talking points and setting that to the grunge he invented, but let's face it: Dude's working quicker and gutsier than rockers half his age. You can tell Young's old school simply by the way he makes his points in a lightning-fast 42 minutes.

Fans might recall drummer Chad Cromwell and bassist Rick Rosas from Young's "El Dorado," the excellent EP that prefigured his '89 album "Freedom." And speaking of, "War" isn't the first time Young's sung about the Bush family. The hit single "Rockin' in the Free World" from "Freedom" took aim at the hard cultural climate and economic chaos of the elder Bush's administration ("We got a thousand points of light/for the homeless man/We got a kinder, gentler/machine gun hand").

These days, what with another war on, Young seems less cynical and more direct, inspired by the sing-along simplicity and candor of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs' protest tunes. Young also wrote these songs incredibly fast, and the first thing to go was lyrical complexity. (Those 100-voice backup singers seem to be there to show you where to sing along.)

The opening "After the Garden" wastes no time: "Won't need no shadow man/runnin' the government" over the four-on-the-floor heartbeat whump and fuzzy riffs that are as much Young's lingua franca as acoustic strumming.

The title track is an ode to everyday resistance, "Restless Consumer" can't stand all our buying and the scathing "Shock and Awe" ("Thousands of bodies in the ground/brought home in boxes to a trumpet's sound") refuses to let voters off the hook for the president's re-election. ("We had a chance to change our mind/but somehow wisdom was hard to find.")

The track that's received the most press is "Let's Impeach the President" (no subtlety here) with its strange "Flip!/flop!" chorus over sound bites of Bush's speeches. He lays it on thick ("Let's impeach the president for lying/and misleading our country into war"), but the combination of Les Paul buzz and all those voices make the tune sound like the will of the people.

The standout is "Flags of Freedom," the kind of mournful, deceptively simple stomper that only Young can really sell. Over a melody that recalls (OK, somewhat lifts) Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom," a sister watches her brother march in a small-town military parade ("Today's the day our younger son is going off to war/fighting the age-old battle we sometimes won before") as she listens to Dylan on her iPod. No moral, no ending, just a lingering sadness and that sacred six-string bluster.

Closing with a choral "America the Beautiful" is not quite as moving as Young thinks it is, but hey, it sounds like it was easy to get wrapped up in the moment. On the whole, this is a "War" on war, and Young sounds ready for a fight (or at least a good peace rally).

And hey, Roland: Thanks, man.