By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Getting all cinematical: more movie-ish Neil Young intrigue
Why are the circumstances of the recording and release of this new Neil Young album turning out more cinematic than anything I’ve seen in days (except the superbly measured United 93)? In the Globe and Mail, Robert Everett-Green has the memorable lede of the moment as he gets to hear the “profoundly patriotic” “Living in War”: “We met outside a bagel joint in north Toronto, then drove a few blocks to a quiet street where two strangers could sit in a big old Cadillac and listen to the car stereo in peace. Then Robert Young slipped a CD-ROM from a plain white sleeve and gave me a rare preview of the nine explosive new songs on his brother Neil Young’s much-anticipated album… The disc was made in a hurry, recorded in three days on Neil Young’s California ranch and another 12-hour session in a Los Angeles studio. I can hear the urgency in Young’s singing, as if there’s not a moment to lose when a great lie has spread over the land and only strong, sustained truth-telling can turn it back. “Living With War” is a fierce, comprehensive indictment of the Bush administration and all its failures, at home and abroad, but it doesn’t feel like an outsider’s dissent. It’s the work of someone who clearly identifies with the core values of ordinary Middle Americans who voted for Bush, who sent their sons and daughters to war, and who are beginning to feel betrayed… The text [of the lyrics] alone can’t convey the sense of gasping outrage in Young’s singing, and his forceful arrangements for guitar, bass, drums and sometimes trumpet. His electric guitar’s gnarly, saturated tone has an almost drunken quality, as if it too were reeling from the great betrayal…. Mostly, it’s a big-tent collection of ordinary citizens, which at the end of the album sings an a cappella version of ‘America the Beautiful,’ recalling in a more robust key the final scene of Michael Cimino’s… Vietnam film, The Deer Hunter.” [More blow-by-blow at the link; the album starts streaming on Friday for one week at Young’s own website or visit Young’s