Given Yoko Ono's reputation as an artist, a first glance at the tracklist of Yes, I’m a Witch can seem almost comical. Not that I want to try it, but I'm guessing that if you cornered indie kids (or music critics) on their lunch breaks and asked which bands might profitably be given Ono vocal tracks to build whole new songs around, it would not occur to many to suggest the Sleepy Jackson. Cat Power and Le Tigre might seem like good ideas, given a little prompting; the Polyphonic Spree, not so much. And yet not only do most of these acts turn in interesting work-- the quaver in Ono's voice will rub up against anyone's production in fascinating ways-- but they're strikingly appropriate: It's Ono’s reputation that has the issues.
The presumable aim of this collection, after all, is to make Ono's case as a vocalist, songwriter, and thinker to more potential fans. And the truth is that Ono's already appreciated-- maybe even pigeonholed-- as a "difficult" musician: icy shrieker, primal screamer, conceptual artist, and the source of the 6xCD Onobox, which I have actually witnessed strike more fear in people's hearts than the 50-disc Merzbox. Cloud the air further with the disgusting level of mockery and abuse she gets for the sin of having been so cool that even John Lennon was bowled over, and it's easy to forget how much of her work was only incidentally challenging, how much of it was in every sense conceived as popular music. It's not just in the relatively straightforward form of most of her songs-- whether it's ballads, blues, disco, or new wave, the instrumental backings are usually more in danger of sounding too conventional-- but in the sentiment, too, and the audience it imagines. Between Ono's thinking and Lennon's global reach, both found themselves in a position to address ideas-- even challenging and intensely personal ones-- at a listener they could nearly conceive of as the whole known universe.
Which means most of the content of Ono's music is carried by that singular voice, the one thing that gets carried over onto this collection-- that fragile, difficult vibrato that says "Yes, I'm a witch" and "My dear sisters, we must learn to fight" and "I can talk hip when I'm dying inside" and "Even with your warmth and closeness/ The feeling of loneliness hangs over like a curse."
Truth is, there's not much the interpreters here could do to meddle with the effect of that voice and those words, apart from wrap it in more contemporary packages-- at worst, the work they do just distracts from the clarity of the originals. Still, so many do really pleasant things: Shitake Monkey translating the groovy Central Park stroll of "O'Oh" into its perfect down-tempo house equivalent, Spiritualized's Jason Pierce throwing out the frigid disco of "Walking on Thin Ice" and turning it into a guitar-strangling feedback epic, or Porcupine Tree and Cat Power both keeping it spare and modest, hanging back and letting ballads speak for themselves. The Ono/Cat Power pairing is the most revelatory connection here, especially when Chan Marshall slides politely up and sings along. No one goofs up, really; not even Peaches. The biggest surprise is that Le Tigre could take a cheerleadery sock-hop song called "Sisters O Sisters" and somehow suck the life out of it-- which is what tends to happen here, interestingly enough, when people are trying too hard to be abstract and unconventional.
And that's the odd thing about this collection: If it provides people with a bridge into appreciating Ono's work, it won't be by making it more accessible. Plenty of the original songs are more conventionally listenable than their reinventions-- the perky Talking Heads-style new wave of "Kiss Kiss Kiss", for instance, is probably more immediate than the Neptunes-sounding electro mix Peaches turns in, leading off an first third that feels almost like a Piracy Funds Terrorism blend of Ono + everything. Which means something very nice for anyone who eases into appreciating that voice through this collection: Digging into the Ono catalog will be an easy joy, not difficult at all, far more warm and inviting than the world's mean-spirited caricatures of her would suggest.
