So, is Neil Young's Living With War (Reprise) any good? And does it matter? Arguably, the album gained significance through its quick delivery, with Young using the Internet without his multinational boss getting cold sweats. (As of this writing, the album was streaming at neilyoung.com and hyfntrak.com/neilyoung2/AFF23233. By the time you read this, the album will also be available for download, and it's due in stores later this month.) It's nearly close to the world we were once promised, where a major-label artist can use the Web to get music out when it's ready, without having to worry about quarterly earnings, oversaturation or any of that crap.

Additionally, the album's strident, unambiguous anti-Bush message has given Young plenty of forums on CNN and Fox News, not to mention the blogosphere. It sure was fun watching CNN Showbiz Today ask him if he worried about a backlash; if only he had responded, "Lady, have you ever heard Everybody's Rockin'?" For all I know, he's having the Best Week Ever too. Young is just keeping his name in the news, which, as always, serves as a sort of cultural currency.

As for the album itself: Living With War features a power trio abetted by a 100-person choir and, on a few tracks, a cavalry-like trumpet for good measure. The album begins promisingly, with "After the Garden," the title track, and "The Restless Consumer," finding Young not only in rousing form, but with sturdy song structures too. And thank God for that choir, helping flesh out the tunes quickly before he loses interest.

Still, it's noteworthy that the album's most heralded tracks are also—there's no other way to say it—the goofiest. "Let's Impeach the President" has a fun "flip-flop" chorus, but the moldy folk melody and painfully direct lyrics sound like a Christopher Guest parody of Neil Young. And "Looking for a Leader" contains this risible bon mot: "Maybe it's Obama, but he thinks that he's too young/ Maybe it's Colin Powell to right what he's done wrong."

Some may find Living With War simply beyond reproach because of its timeliness and unwillingness to mince words. But it's hard to imagine these songs remaining vital after this fin de siecle finally passes. Nothing on Living With War has the urgency of 1989's "Rockin' in the Free World," which has managed to stay popular long after the reign of George H.W. Bush that it lambasted. Nor do any of these tracks match "I'm the Ocean," one of Young's best songs of the '90s, a driving, hypnotic meditation on its times. It's a powerfully unknowable song, which—not to cast doubt on the sincerity of Living With War—is just the kind of thing that doesn't get you on CNN.