This Note’s for W

Neil Young unleashes Living With War. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Unless you’ve been sleeping under Iraq for the past two weeks, you have already read this news: Friday morning, Neil Young posted his latest album, Living With War, on his website. Until next Friday, you can stream the whole thing for free by clicking here.

With full respect to the 60-year-old folk-rock singer-songwriter, more music at this hour of his career is not expected to be a hold-the-phone, wake-the-kids-grade event. Well, maybe it is up here in Canada, but not downstairs, where millions of Americans are too preoccupied with idols to care about icons. Living With War, however, has attracted keen interest from points across the globe. Why? Because from its first fervent note to its last, the album demands the ouster of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Young was born in Toronto — a fact you can expect Fox News to report at least 132 times in the coming days — but has spent most of the last four decades living in the United States. From Buffalo Springfield through Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young through Crazy Horse and beyond, his music has consistently embodied Middle America’s mythic ideals (truth, justice, tolerance, etc.). In the ’80s, he was an outspoken supporter of Bush’s hero, Ronald Reagan; 10 days after the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001, Young unleashed an impassioned cover of John Lennon’s Imagine on a heal-the-masses television special; he’s been a longtime performer at Farm Aid, and sits on the organization’s board of directors. Put another way, Young’s past teems with the same down-home sentimentality that Bush pledged to uphold before his election, but — as judged by a strong majority of U.S. citizens — has since forsaken.

Courtesy Warner Music Canada.

Young is nowhere near the first musician to criticize his current president. The Dixie Chicks, Merle Haggard, Kanye West, Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, Sleater-Kinney and a great many more have all bashed Bush and his foreign policies. None, though, has done so in such an overt, sustained and furious way. Each of Living With War’s 10 songs, including the tear-jerking rendition of America the Beautiful that comes at the close, is intended to shake “the decider” by his starched lapels.

Dubya’s faults, as catalogued by Young:

(1) He’s close-minded: “Don’t need no terror squad / Don’t want no damned jihad / Blowin’ themselves away in my hood / But we don’t talk to them / So we don’t learn from them / Hate don’t negotiate with good” (The Restless Consumer)

(2) He’s not accountable: “Won’t need no shadow man / Runnin’ the government” (After the Garden)

(3) He violates civil liberties: “I join the multitudes / I raise my hand in peace / I never bow to the laws of the thought police” (Living With War)

(4) He is a warmonger... “A hundred voices from a hundred lands / Need someone to listen / People are dying here and there / They don’t see the world the way you do / There’s no mission accomplished here / Just death to thousands” (The Restless Consumer)

(5) ...who hides the horrors of combat: “Thousands of bodies in the ground / Brought home in boxes to a trumpet’s sound / No one sees them coming home that way / Thousands buried in the ground” (Shock and Awe)

And so on. The album’s vitriol reaches its apex on the seventh song, Let’s Impeach the President. Young, backed by a chorus of 100 vocalists, rages into his microphone: “Let’s impeach the president for lying / Misleading our country into war / Abusing all the power that we gave him / And shipping all our money out the door.” Those lyrics are paired with clips of Bush’s Texan twang, expounding on Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other American controversies. “We’re gonna smoke ’em out... Bring ’em on... A wiretap requires a court order... It is true that much of the intelligence has turned out to be wrong...” You get the idea. It’s a long list, and adds to a damning indictment.

Living With War is no sonic marvel. The album was recorded over three weekends at Young’s California ranch and during one 12-hour studio session in Los Angeles. The rush shows. The music is a lot like Crazy Horse’s Rust Never Sleeps — live and loud, raw and caustic. Young has described it as “metal folk... a metal version of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan.” The guitars are appropriately crunchy, and punctuated by an intermittent trumpet. Young shouts as many lyrics as he sings.

“This is about exchanging ideas... it’s about getting a message out. It’s about empowering people by giving them a voice. I know not everyone believes what I say is what they think,” Young has posted on his blog dedicated to Living With War. “But like I said before... ya know... red and blue is not black and white. We’re all together. It’s a record about unification.”

Those are strong words, to be sure. Neil Young is Canadian by blood, but on Living With War, he declares himself an American patriot.

Reprise Records will release Living With War for digital download on May 2. It will be available on store shelves soon thereafter.

Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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