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CD review: Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band ‘Between My Head and the Sky’
Yoko Ono/ Plastic Ono Band
‘Between My Head and the Sky’
(Chimera)
Grade: A-
At this point, the only music fans who have heard Yoko Ono’s extraordinary 40-year body of work and don’t recognize her as an innovator are pretty easily slotted into two groups: folks who are still fuzzy on women’s suffrage and Beatles loons who still blame her for their inevitable disintegration. Even if you don’t have much use for her often extreme music, Ono was there before most folks, pushing envelopes in art and sound and doing it as a woman whom, for a while there, the entire planet seemed to hate just kind of on spec.
This is the first Ono album released with the Plastic Ono name since 1973’s proto-feminist screed “Feeling the Space” and her first all-new studio effort since 1995’s alt-rock infused “Rising.” This new model Ono Band includes her son Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda from Cibo Matto, and electronic-dance savant Keigo Oyamada, a.k.a Cornelius. “Between My Head…” rolodexes 40 years of Ono’s tricks. “Waiting for the D Trains” opens the album with spikey, no wave guitar flail and wordless yells, while “The Sun is Down” would be welcome at any rave. The jazz on “Ask the Elephant” owes plenty to Ornette Coleman’s harmelodic funk, while “Memory of Footsteps” and “Unun. To” (the latter in Japanese) are meditative, small group sketches which are alternately thoughtful and distressingly Steve Allen-ish. “Calling” could be a leftover “White Album” jam from a particularly “out” afternoon or a Sonic Youth rehearsal tape. In no way is this a bad thing. In no way is almost any of this album a bad thing — it some of the most vigorous, vital rock music a 76-year-old has ever produced.
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By David
September 26, 2009 9:31 PM | Link to this
Nice review, Joe. And, the Steve Allen line gave me a laugh.