Justice Through Music brings you in its full glory the historic new
CD by Neil Young, Living With War. On this page, we will be one of the
first to bring you news, lyrics and music from the CD.
5/2/06: Living With War Available Now Via Digital Download
You can buy Living With War at the following download sites, either individual songs or the full CD.
Rhapsody
iTunes (pre-order; delivered on Tues, May 9th)
SonyConnect
Also, preorders for the actual CD are on Amazon and
Tower Records for shipping on May 8th. The CD will also be in
traditional music outlets around May 8th.
4/28/06: Hear Neil Young’s Living With War On JTM’s Special Stream
JTM, working directly with Neil Young to promote his new Living With War CD,
has the entire CD here in streaming format for you to hear before it goes on
sale on May 2nd. Enjoy!!!
Note! When clicking below a popup window will open and play the songs. Please make
sure that you disable popup-blockers in your browser.
4/24/06: JTM will have a direct streaming link to Living With War beginning
Fri, Apr. 28th. The album will be available at digital retailers beginning May 2nd,
which JTM will link to, and actual CDs will be available in stores early May. Rock is alive!
4/23/06: Lyrics to all the songs on Living With War are available
here.
4/21/06: JTM was invited to a secret preview of the entire Living
With War CD at Reprise Records in Burbank, California today. The CD
is amazing and powerful, in the tradition of the original "Ohio"
song he did about the Kent State murders that galvanized the country against
the war in Vietnam. Change is in the air... Here’s our review.
LIVING WITH WAR
Neil Young wants to keep on rockin’ the free world.
His new record, Living With War, makes very clear that
if the Bush regime is allowed to continue, there may not be a free
world to rock for much longer.
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 mother%^&*#% of a protest album. In fact, Living With
War may just be the Fahrenheit 9/11 of rock.
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!"
No, we do not.
The fourth cut, "Shock and Awe," skewers our botched
"liberation" of Iraq due to hubris and deliberately falsified
intel. By this point it is clear Young is not pulling any punches. The
lyrics are sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes humorous, sometimes laden
with uncomfortable truth.
Cuts 5 and 6, "Families" and "Flags of Freedom"
examine the effect of war on us all, and "Flags" stops you dead
with this thought-provoking lyric, "Do you think that you believe
in yours more than they do theirs somehow?"
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.
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, makes it quite
clear that Young not only loves America, but wants to see it returned to
its former glory. Soon.
The really remarkable thing is that the CD captures a live sound like
few others do. It really sounds like you’re in the room with Young and his
3-piece band as they blaze through the tunes. The album was recorded in a
week with minimal overdubs, and this contributes an amazing vitality and
urgency to the whole package. The choir and occasional trumpet add zing to
an otherwise hard-rockin' bass-guitar-drum assault.
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.
Jim Cirile 4/21/06
For more info on this record, please visit www.neilyoung.com, www.livingwithwar.blogspot.com
and www.jtmp.org.
Thanks to The Brad Blog for the Jim Cirile album review
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