Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band – Between My Head and the Sky (2009, Japan/US)
Our next spotlight is on number 1080 on The List, submitted by avi_miller.
This album from the indomitable Yoko Ono brings back the band/collective, Plastic Ono Band, originally formed by Ono and John Lennon in the 1960s and last seen around the birth of their son, Sean Lennon. The reincarnated band on this wonderful slab of experimental/art rock is lead by Sean, and includes some of the best musicians NYC and Japan have to offer: Keigo Oyamada aka Cornelius (previously of influential Shibuya-kei group Flipper’s Guitar), Yuka Honda (of Cibo Matto), Yuko Araki, Hirotaka “Shimmy” Shimizu, Shahzad Ismaily (who pops up everywhere once you know his name), Michael Leonhart, Erik Friendlander, Daniel Carter, and Indigo Street.
The album goes a lot of wonderful places and often recalls Ono’s earliest work, but sounds so fresh that, if you didn’t notice the release date, you’d understandably have no idea that the artist was already 76 years old at this point. The Plastic Ono Band would have one last hurrah a few years later with almost the same lineup plus a long list of additional guests (including Questlove, Ad-Rock, and Mike D), Take Me to the Land of Hell released in 2013 to celebrate Ono’s 80th birthday.
I should perhaps admit I sort of tipped the scales on this one, though for good (albeit sad) reasons. Thanks to our resident artist Norn Cutson‘s love of Yoko Ono, I finally gave Ono’s work a chance last year, and quickly realized that I had written her off simply based on the biases of others, not my own opinions. Turns out, I totally dig Ono’s music, to the point where her 1973 album Approximately Infinite Universe – which Norn had done a lovely tribute piece of for their Record Collection art series – ended up on my personal 2025 AOTY list. So, in planning ahead for this month’s blog spotlights, I really wanted to feature an Ono album as a tribute to Norn, as today it’s somehow already been an entire year since they tragically left us. Since we inexplicably didn’t already have an Ono album on The List, I thought about adding Approximately myself and uploading Norn’s art since the image is still available in their Mastodon post, but I wasn’t sure that was appropriate. Also, I still have a lot of Ono to catch up on, so I wasn’t confident that Approximately would be the best album in her discography to choose. So, many thanks to Avi for stepping in and picking this one. I might’ve lost it when I heard the last track (on the digital version of the album, “I’m Going Away Smiling”), but Avi chose very well.
“The Multiversal DJ may not be playing what you want to hear, but She’s spinnin’ what you NEED to hear!”
– Norn Cutson
You are greatly missed, my friend.
#artRock #avantgarde #Cornelius #experimental #experimentalRock #KeigoOyamada #PlasticOnoBand #SeanLennon #YokoOno #YukaHonda
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