Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band

Between My Head and the Sky (Chimera)

By Marisa Iacobucci
Published: September 10th, 2009 | 12:00am

There's no sign of stopping the force that is Yoko Ono. At 76 years young, she's revived the Plastic Ono Band, the rotating band she and John Lennon formed — which at times included the likes of Eric Clapton and Frank Zappa, among others — to release what may be her most energetic album to date, Between My Head and the Sky. This is the first album released as Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band since Feeling the Space in '73. In fact, Sean Lennon, who co-produced the album with his mom, described the recording session in a recent quote as "a tornado of inspiration," as Ono wrote 16 songs in six days and reached a peak on one day by writing and tracking six songs in an afternoon. Is that even humanly possible? Thank goodness Ono is not from this world. It's no wonder the album is called what it is.

As with any of Ono's creative endeavors, you can expect the unexpected on Between My Head and the Sky. The album features an eclectic mix of musical styles — classic rock, electronic, avant pop, improvisation — with Ono's various vocal offerings including freestyling many of the best lyrics on the album, as on the wildly entertaining "Ask the Elephant," rapturous vocal inventions on "The Sun Is Down" (think dance-floor diva), and singing partly in Japanese on "Unun. To" and "Higa Noboru." The ensemble, consisting of Japanese avant-pop musicians and downtown Manhattan improvisers, consistently matches Ono's adventurous style streams, holding the edges of a groove, adding grit with distortions, and keeping up to speed with electronic spurts. Some of the new Plastic Ono Band members include Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto, Keigo "Cornelius" Oyamada, Shahzad Ismaily, and Michael Leonhart, among many other talented instrumentalists.

As much as this album resides on the far edges of the kind of music and performance art we've come to expect from the unstoppable Yoko Ono, it couldn't be a more balanced and career-defining collection of work from one of contemporary culture's true pioneers. And I say peace to that!

—