Coyne’s greatest talent is using mundane instances to express broader ideas and questions. Ambulance Driver” is a perfect case in which multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd creates a colorful sonic palate for singer Wayne Coyne’s story of waiting for the ambulance after a car wreck. The Flaming Lips album At War With the Mystics offers a greater variety of lyrical and musical devices. The technique of incorporating news sound bites into singles is one that became clichéd and tactless in the 90’s through its use by the band Live in their tribute to the Oklahoma City bombing victims and by Sarah McLaughlin in “I Will Remember You” after the Columbine shootings. Neil not only rants on through six poorly argued verses, he includes live clips of George Bush making a jackass of himself in public. In the “Restless Consumer,” Young rejects the American mentality of spending with the lines “Don’t need no nausea/Don’t need no side effects like diarrhea or sexual death/Don’t need no more lies.” The silliness continues with the most obvious example “Let’s Impeach the President.” Any words used in communicating this message are superfluous after the title. From there, Young commences with songs so poetically incompetent they make a die-hard liberal like myself blush with embarrassment. One example shows up in the first song “After The Garden,” in which Young asks the question of what people will do or say after the “garden is gone.” This song may be the one beacon of lyrical taste throughout the whole record. There are even some typical Neil Young lyrics-solid imagery and metaphors that are neither mind-blowing nor obtuse. Not quite as strange or compelling as any performance of Crazy Horse, this ensemble is still coherent and unified in its course. ![]() His melodies are catchy and the back vocals perfect. The rhythm section is driving and up tempo. One is Neil Young’s record Living With War and another The Flaming Lips’ At War With the Mystics.įrom the beginning of Living With War, it’s clear that Neil Young is up to his old tricks. ![]() Most recently there has been a near-rash of concept albums about George W. However, in the last few years, there have been more and more artists using their music as a platform for protest, bands as disparate as Pearl Jam and the Dixie Chicks. For the last thirty years, pop culture has been nearly void of protest songs, not to mention whole protest albums. My introduction to the concept of protest music was a bootleg cassette that featured Pearl Jam covering the Bob Dylan staple “Masters of War.” This song was originally included on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, his first important album, released in 1963, close to the beginning of the Vietnam War.
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