I'll preface this by saying that I have a clear bias toward Neil Young's loud, ragged rock when compared to his quiet, acoustic folk. That said, his new disc, Living With War, is everything I have wanted from his last few discs.

While Young has made a career of defying expectations and following his own path regardless of the desires of critics and fans, he really seemed to go off the rails in the late '90s and never got back on track. Things came to a head on the ironically titled Are You Passionate? which found Young pounding out tired riffs and offering jingoistic pap like "Let's Roll." Where one hoped the Sept. 11 attacks would fuel Young's music, they instead seemed to sap his energy.

His latest studio disc, Prairie Wind, was another missed opportunity. Though it has grown on me since its release, I still find it oddly stiff and lifeless given the mortal issues Young faced during its writing and recording.

Given that prelude, it seemed too much to hope that Living With War would offer anything notable, let alone remarkable. But remarkable it is. The disc, written, recorded and released on his web site in a matter of weeks, is a fiery blast of targeted vitriol. But it's more than that: it also is the most rocking, raggedly right disc in Young's catalog since Ragged Glory. The songs are lyrically biting and musically invigorating.

Young has made better music, and likely will again, but he hasn't made a disc so infused with passion in years, and that elevates this material and makes this something greater than its parts. It's not a great disc, but it's the right disc for the times, and for Young. Will it weather better than similar discs from Steve Earle (The Revolutions Starts... Now), Dan Bern (My Country II) and others that were issued in the lead up to the 2004 elections? Probably not. All, thanks to their topicality are likely to be seen more as relics than essential parts of the artists' bodies of work. Living With War feels like something that will hold up to repeat listens for the forseeable future, however, perhaps because, unlike the election which came and went in a day, it's topic doesn't seem headed toward resolution any time soon.