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- By date
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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]
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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.
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Young hasn't sounded this fired up in years.
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OK, more news event than musical milestone. But a really great news event.
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A courageous statement that should resonate far and wide.
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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.
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He has not written and recorded with such emergency since "Ohio."
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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.
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A milestone effort.
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It may not be his best album but it ranks as one of his most important.
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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]
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Q MagazineA revelation, brimming with passion and some of the best melodies Young has penned in the last 30 years. [Jul 2006, p.113]
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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.
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Young's best record since at least Mirror Ball and probably Ragged Glory.
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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.
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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.
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"Living With War" -- irate, passionate, tuneful, thoughtful and obstinate -- is definitely worth a click.
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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.
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[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.
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BlenderIt's brave, and it's needed. [Jul 2006, p.95]
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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]
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Paste MagazineThe album has the instantaneous feel of a blog. [Aug 2006, p.93]
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Living With War: American Idiot for hippies.
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New Musical Express (NME)Really, what's to be gained from simplistic sloganeering like, "We don't need no more lies!" [20 May 2006, p.33]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 47 out of 53
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Mixed: 2 out of 53
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Negative: 4 out of 53
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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.
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JohannaPDec 23, 2006a compelling and beautiful complete work for a world that needs to find peace inside and outside the heart beat.
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IlliniQAug 21, 2006