Album Review of "Living with War"
From Music Box's Living with War album review:
"Where T Bone Burnett, on his recently issued set The True False Identity, took a more cerebral approach to socio-political commentary by burying his poetic ruminations within a series of arty textures, Young delivers his thoughts on Living with War in a decidedly more straightforward fashion. Significantly upping the ante, he ditched the lyrical complexities of his theater piece Greendale and replaced them with a ferociously direct indictment of the Republican leadership’s failed policies. "Won’t need no shadow man/Runnin’ the government/Won’t need no stinkin’ war," he sings with contempt on the opening track After the Garden. Later, on the aptly titled Let’s Impeach the President, he lambastes George W. Bush and then intersperses soundbites from America’s Commander-in-Chief with the chanted words "flip" and "flop" in a manner that would make Daily Show host Jon Stewart proud. In fact, by the time that the album has concluded, Young angrily has taken Bush to task not just over the war in Iraq, but also for his fiscal irresponsibility, his post-9/11 blundering, his scandalous handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, his various infringements upon civil liberties, and the environmental devastation that he has wrought to the benefit of massive, global corporations."
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