" Let's impeach the president for lyin' "

War and peaceniks
Neil Young's rage songs and Paul Simon's sage songs speak to the times -- the former with guitars and contempt for presidential lies, the latter with charm and sonic surprise
By Cary Darling
Star-Telegram Pop Culture Critic

A divisive American-led conflict is raging halfway across the globe, fanning the flames of pop-music protest, at least from some of those who remember the furor over the Vietnam War, even if it was just from flickering images on TV. The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam are some of the bigger names who've recently committed their anti-war passions to disc. They're joined this week by Neil Young's rousing and incendiary, if one-dimensional, Living With War, and Paul Simon's more nuanced and artful Surprise.
But it's the lack of subtlety of Living With War that's already attracting the most attention. And no wonder. It's a throwback; a wounded howl of ragged, guitar-driven political anger; an acetylene-soaked epistle not heard from a major rock figure since Rolling Stone went to glossy paper.
Young -- the 60-year-old, Canadian-born singer/songwriter who wrote the aching 1970 anti-violence anthem Ohio, became a fan of President Reagan in the '80s and wrote Let's Roll after 9-11 and in support of the War on Terror -- doesn't couch his emotions in anything resembling poetic ambiguity. If President Bush found comedian Stephen Colbert's parody at the recent White House Correspondents Association Dinner tough to swallow, then Living With War is going to require a stomach pump.
It's obvious from the first lines of the opening track, After the Garden ("Won't need no shadow man runnin' the government, won't need no stinkin' war"), that Living With War places the blame for Young's rage and feelings of political betrayal squarely on the shoulders of President Bush. And he doesn't let up. From the title track through Shock and Awe, Lookin' for a Leader and, most obviously, Let's Impeach the President, Young comes across as a man on a mission:

Let's impeach the president for lyin'
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door
What if Al Quaeda blew up the levees?
Would New Orleans have been safer that way?
Sheltered by the government's protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Reportedly recorded in just four days, the 10 tracks on Living With War sound like what they are: a spasm of rattled-cage outrage, tempered somewhat by trumpet, a 100-voice choir and Young's folky traditionalism -- Families celebrates familial bonds, and Young ends the album with a straight-up version of America the Beautiful. But make no mistake, with its raucous guitars and no-frills punch, this may be Young's fiercest rock album.
At the same time, the set of songs might be among his least complex. They don't bear much scrutiny. Stripped of their timeliness and single-minded, torch-and-pitchfork effort to drive Bush from power, they might soon just seem dated and dreary.
It's hard to imagine many stations slipping anything from Living With War in between spins of James Blunt and Dem Franchize Boyz. Unlike the '60s and '70s, when the likes of Young, Springsteen and Dylan were regulars on what was then called progressive radio, and even on Top 40, they're virtually strangers to the airwaves these days. Old-line protest-rock enthusiasts would be loath to admit it, but if the Pussycat Dolls or the Killers had recorded Let's Impeach the President, the masses beyond Young's fan base just might hear it.
Of course, Paul Simon, 64, faces a similar commercial quandary. But unlike Young, he's not writing screeds to shift political opinion. Nor is he in a particularly angry mood. On the blissful Surprise, produced with a sense of subtle sonic adventure by ambient/electronica pioneer and former Roxy Music keyboardist Brian Eno, Simon sings lightly in the generically anti-war Wartime Prayers, "I want to rid my heart of envy and cleanse my soul of rage." While obviously a comment on the global situation, the song hardly qualifies as a rant.
Instead, Simon tells his usual stories of character and wordplay, enhanced by Eno's restrained experimentalism. The result is Simon's most entrancing work since the African-inspired Graceland two decades ago.
It's amazing how Simon, about as far from an American Idol-style neophyte as can be imagined, takes on the musical personality of his collaborators. For Graceland, he adopted the rhythmic sound of the South African townships, and he's toyed with reggae and Latin, among many other genres, over the years.
On Surprise, he's not so much about jumping cultural barriers. Instead, he and Eno have come up with a muted yet engaging rock approach that doesn't veer wildly from what listeners expect of Simon but is different enough to be intriguing. In fact, Simon gets downright funky at times, as on the humorous Outrageous, or throws in an unexpected musical element, like the fuzzed-out guitar line that snakes through How Can You Live in the Northeast?
That's Me perhaps best sums up the appeal of Surprise. Placing typically winsome Simon lyrics ("Well, I never cared much for money and money never cared for me") and delicate guitar runs over a repetitive yet vaguely avant rhythm, it's the best of both worlds: the sly charm of vintage Simon meshed with the playfulness of eclectic Eno.
While Young's Living With War and Simon's Surprise couldn't be more different, they both show that age has little to do with pop vitality. Contemporary chart competitors 40 years their junior have a long way to equal Young's explosive emotionalism or Simon's endearing romanticism.
If it's not quite like old times, it comes pretty close.
Neil Young
Living With War
Reprise
Paul Simon
Surprise
Reprise

Cary Darling, (817) 390-7571 cdarling@star-telegram.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/entertainment/14523553.htm