CSNY: Déja Vù

Neil Young took longtime partners-in-protest Crosby, Stills & Nash out on the road before 2006’s midterm elections. They performed songs from Young’s anti-Bush folk-metal tirade ‘Living with War’ and other agit-pop classics from their catalogue. The results are detailed in this rough-around-the-edges road doc directed by Young under his regular nom de film, Bernard Shakey.

To date, Shakey’s output has been hit and miss. So it comes as something of a surprise to discover that this is not just competent but, for the first hour at least, one of the finest music documentaries in recent memory. It expertly balances electrifying concert footage and self-mocking backstage (and onstage) mishaps with ABC News correspondent Michael Cerre’s ‘embedded’ reports.The highlight comes as the tour leaves the north-eastern seaboard and ventures into redneck territory, where the lyrics for Young’s ‘Let’s Impeach the President’ spark a tirade of verbal reproach and mass walkouts. Young’s response is typically laconic – a half smile, a shrug and a sense that this was exactly what he wanted to happen.

The fun dries up as the focus shifts to explore the lives of people affected by the war. But if, as affable walrus David Crosby asserts, the purpose of good art is to make its audience feel something, anything, then for the majority of its running time this is a resounding success.