- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
OK, more news event than musical milestone. But a really great news event.
-
It may not be his best album but it ranks as one of his most important.
-
Young's best record since at least Mirror Ball and probably Ragged Glory.
-
Living With War's short gestation benefits Young's performance, inspiring him to make his loudest, rawest release of new material since at least Ragged Glory, maybe even Rust Never Sleeps.
-
Living With War is instantly the most incisive and penetrating album that Young has released in years, and it is arguably the most vital of his career.
-
He has not written and recorded with such emergency since "Ohio."
-
The challenge of writing songs designed to lodge immediately in people's heads seems to have forced Young to come up with strong melodies, something else noticeably absent in his oeuvre of late.
-
A courageous statement that should resonate far and wide.
-
[The songs] manage to be unified in a way that Young wanted Greendale to be but didn't quite pull off, yet they also stand on their own and are, overall, more memorable than those on Prairie Wind.
-
Young hasn't sounded this fired up in years.
-
The reactionary disc is a step up from 2003's similarly political offering, Greendale, largely because it doesn't come disguised as some community-theater production.
-
A milestone effort.
-
"Living With War" -- irate, passionate, tuneful, thoughtful and obstinate -- is definitely worth a click.
-
Now then, aside from all that, "After the Garden" and "Families" are right up there with "Rockin in the Free World" for displays of board-stomping bravado, which is of course much less the goal here than raising awareness.
-
In context, no song on Living With War is as simple as it may seem on its own--not a bumper sticker, not a pamphlet, not the slightest wrinkle in a Sunday morning pundit’s furrowed brow. It’s a direct shot into the national discourse from a rock world that has been largely silent until recently.
-
With few exceptions, Young's own "Ohio" being one of them, moment-specific protest music tends to dry up and blow away. But that's for the future. For now, Living With War accomplishes exactly what it sets out to accomplish, loudly.
-
Los Angeles TimesThe sheer brazenness of this collection is refreshing after years of timidity in the upper echelons of the pop world. [6 May 2006]
-
UncutFor those of us who prefer Neil when he's plugged-in and splenetic, it's tempting to call the album his best since 1990's Ragged Glory. Living With War, though, is too much of a frontline dispatch, too consumed with the present, to be easily catalogued for posterity. [Jul 2006, p.82]
-
Q MagazineA revelation, brimming with passion and some of the best melodies Young has penned in the last 30 years. [Jul 2006, p.113]
-
MojoAnd the songs? Urgent, instant, bolshie mostly, with a stronger individual melodic sense than, say, Greendale, but without the intense beauty of, say, Ohio. [Jul 2006, p.112]
-
BlenderIt's brave, and it's needed. [Jul 2006, p.95]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 47 out of 53
-
Mixed: 2 out of 53
-
Negative: 4 out of 53
-
BenedictA.Jul 17, 2007I think its amazing how Neil Young has stayed in touch and is still releasing songs that exemplify his rock and roll attitude.
-
JohannaPDec 23, 2006a compelling and beautiful complete work for a world that needs to find peace inside and outside the heart beat.
-
IlliniQAug 21, 2006