“Yes, I’m a Witch,” the latest album by Yoko Ono, may finally bring the mainstream recognition this prolific 74-year-old avant-garde artist deserves.
Released this month by Astralwerks, the album features seventeen of Ono’s songs, re-interpreted and remixed by some of today’s best musicians, including Peaches, the Flaming Lips, Le Tigre, Polyphonic Spree and DJ Spooky, Cat Power and Antony (from Antony and the Johnsons). Each artist selected a song of their choice from Ono’s back catalogue, and was given use of whatever material they needed to create their own interpretation of the song.
Most of the artists chose to keep only Yoko’s vocals and the result is an eclectic collection of covers. Cat Power and Yoko do a melancholic duo of “Revelations,” while Peaches and Le Tigre respectively pump up the energy on “Kiss Kiss Kiss” and “Sisters O Sisters.” Antony, of Antony and the Johnsons, obviously takes “Toy Boat” to a melodramatic place and you can hear “Walking on Thin Ice” in a psychedelic drone by Spiritualized. (This particular song was remixed before back in 2003 by the Pet Shop Boys, Danny Tenaglia and other DJs.)
The result is moving and an incredibly diverse treat, showcasing the talent of an underappreciated artist. Until now, Yoko Ono may still be best known for being the wife of Beatles’ superstar John Lennon, despite the fact that she had two other husbands – including American jazz musician and film producer Anthony Cox – and a prolific artistic career in her own right. She has produced a huge collection of 16mm films, written an off-Broadway theater piece entitled Hiroshima, and is well known in the New York art scene for her “interactive conceptual events” and involvement in the 1960s Fluxus movement. Yoko Ono is quoted as saying “I deal with music of the mind” but her explorations in music and sound may have been too left field and abstract for the fans of her husband’s pop music. With “I am a Witch,” Ono may finally have found the formula to win over these same pop music lovers.
This article was published Friday, February 16, 2007.
