![]() Le Tigre takes on “Sisters O Sisters,” and more or less re-imagines the track as a Le Tigre song, which is forgivable since Ono’s nasal whine is nearly indiscernible from Kathleen Hannah’s. Peaches gives the flirty “Kiss Kiss Kiss” a lo-fi grime beat with Casio handclaps and buzzes and, somewhat predictably for the dirtiest mind in show business, jacks up the vocals during the bridge to emphasize Ono’s orgiastic moans. The first half of the collection is dominated by dance-based acts. But, for the most part, these tracks are reverent but not gushy pop revisions of Ono’s back catalog. Just exactly how much Ono influenced some of these artists is unclear (Hank Shocklee, from Public Enemy’s production team The Bomb Squad, produces two tracks on Witch) and a few phone it in. The contributors to this project include members of Spiritualized, the Flaming Lips, Antony and the Johnsons, Le Tigre, and other high profile acts. Yet Ono skeptics and fans alike will be unnerved by the disc’s excellence. Astralwerks’s Yes, I’m a Witch, a best-of/tribute album/remix bricolage where individual artists remix Ono’s vocals over their own compositions, seems as unnecessary as a record can get. ![]() Ono’s already been the subject of a tribute album (1984’s Every Man Has a Woman) and a high-profile remix album (the Rising Mixes EP from 1996), and the Walking on Thin Ice compilation is a fine distillation of her career and is readily available for about three bucks on. Never mind that she broke up the Beatles: her greatest crime against humanity was inventing electro-clash. Her voice is atonal, and though her lyrics are often rich in imagery, their syntax is as jagged as the Glassworks rhythms and synths that dominate anything post-Plastic Ono Band. Ono’s output before, during, and after her relationship with Lennon is brave, inventive, and pioneering, but it’s also inarguably annoying. Even though Ono was a prominent figure in the art world (collaborating with John Cage, LaMonte Young, and other big-shots), when her future husband John Lennon was still getting bowl cuts and ripping off the Kinks, all complimentary reviews of Ono’s work inevitably began defensively. The animosity directed toward Yoko Ono is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s seemingly inarguable givens, like covering Robert Johnson songs, referring to Elvis as “The King,” or the way multi-disc concept albums always suck.
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