Five Years and Counting: "Living with War" - Neil Young
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Artist:
I remember listening to Neil Young's hastily cobbled together anti-war diatribe Living with War online shortly after its release on Reprise Records in 2006. I remember listening and wanting desperately to like it. But there was no getting around it, almost every song on the album got on my every last ever-loving nerve. Yuck!Still last Sunday night having had a cursory listen to a video playlist I had compiled some time ago on YouTube and finding the songs hopelessly tired and played out, it was to Young's Living with War (I had begun to warm to him in the meantime, coming to own and treasure the Live at Massey Hall, 1971 cd, reeled in by songs like "Old Man" and "The Needle and the Damage Done" encountered on one of my Pandora stations) that I turned.Turns out that nine months after the original release, Reprise released Living with War - in the Beginning, consisting of "the original rough mixes done the day of each session." If the first Living with War could best be likened to saccharine drool, sweet little boppy songs about impeaching the President, etc, Living with War - in the Beginning, at lwat to my ear, is more along the lines of chewing on a stalk of sugar cane - - natural and fibrous and raw. Young's high reedy voice cracks, goes husky, wanders off key. The smooth veneer has been peeled away, revealing boards that are weathered and real. As a result, the latter record seems less a political diatribe straining for popular appeal than an intimate and personal lament.The audio posted here comes from Living with War - in the Beginning. "The Restless Consumer" video is from the original Living with War" release and is the version of that song included on the Body of War cd.
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