Neil Young's greatest albums have been fuelled by anger.

Tonight's The Night, a cruelly neglected classic, was inspired by the drug-induced deaths of friends Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry; On The Beach, Young's finest hour, was a searing, despairing dissection of the pitfalls and loneliness of fame; and the raging fury of Weld was a direct response to the first Gulf War.

Now comes Living With War, the record Young's fans have been waiting for since Weld and a sustained diatribe against President Bush's presidency.

"I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer 18-22 years old, to write these songs and stand up," he says.

But no young Bobby Dylan turned up so Young, in a frantic two-week burst of creativity, wrote Living With War. It is a masterpiece.

From the impassioned anthem Let's Impeach The President to the Dylanesque Flags Of Freedom, from the thumping chords of Families to the melancholy Roger And Out, Living With War lets President Bush have it with both metaphorical barrels.

What pains Young and, indeed, most of the civilised world, are the lies and deceit that Bush and his cowardly allies have used to justify the invasion of Iraq. "America is beautiful, but she has an ugly side," laments Young on Lookin' For A Leader.

This is a beautiful record, with chiming guitars, celestial choirs and haunting lyrics, but its subject matter - war - is ugly, and it is this tension that makes Living With War so vital.

Its gentler predecessor, Prairie Wind, suggested that Young was coming to terms with his own mortality.

Now, however, the grizzled old Canadian rocker is angry again - and the results are spectacular.