Yoko Ono

Warzone

It's a message album on which Ono revisits songs from her past. It's not without merit and, as always, Ono's never boring. But not everything on it works wonderfully well.

An inventive way of uniting her body of work, Warzone furthers her legacy as a promoter of peace and understanding.

That whimsical spirit is perhaps Warzone‘s defining characteristic, despite a tracklist that leans heavily on songs about war and other forms of violence.

She continues in this spirit with Warzone, albeit without the all star backing this time around, opting instead for a stripped back, almost lo-fi approach.

Warzone is not an album built to convince Ono’s naysayers that they’re wrong: it’s too messy and uneven, and its high points are intimidating and difficult. But what it does is prove that at 85, its creator is still capable of raging away with an undimmed intensity.

Even for her niche fans this album is often weak message-wise, not weird enough and is so scatterbrained you’ll be left with little to tie it all together.

Warzone falls into a strange dichotomy: as the album closes with a version of “Imagine” that is hymn-like enough to sound like the heralding of a new dawn, the relevance of Ono’s protests feels as if it’s faded.

The album is not without flaws, the sentimentality of certain songs occasionally threatening to spill into the maudlin, but the overriding sense is one of deep and critical reflection, offering a sensitivity that is needed in our world now as much as ever.