Albums to watch

Warzone

Yoko Ono

Warzone

Sixteenth solo album from the singer-songwriter featuring new arrangements of songs from her back catalogue

ADM rating[?]

6.2

Label
Chimera Music
UK Release date
19/10/2018
US Release date
19/10/2018
  1. 8.0 |   Mojo

    Twelve of the songs here are vintage, unheeded warnings plucked from Ono's catalogue. The finale is Imagine - which now rightly bears a Yoko co-credit. Print edition only

  2. 7.0 |   Uncut

    The sound of Ono gravely warbling "Imagine" at the close of Warzone may invite more ridicule from longtime haters. But believers in her musical vision will deem it very much of a piece with the boldness that marks these new renditions of many of her most furious songs. Print edition only

  3. 7.0 |   Spectrum Culture

    Ono’s lasting influence on contemporary music cannot be overlooked

  4. 7.0 |   All Music

    An inventive way of uniting her body of work, Warzone furthers her legacy as a promoter of peace and understanding
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  5. 7.0 |   Clash

    The closer, almost inevitably, is a cover of ‘Imagine’. Ono sings it like a torch song in an empty karaoke bar, a sweetly affecting reading that restores much of the emotional power to the original just when you thought it had been done to death
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  6. 7.0 |   PopMatters

    Yoko Ono has re-recorded sociopolitical songs from her past for new album Warzone, in which the questions it asks need to be asked
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  7. 7.0 |   Slant Magazine

    Warzone isn’t going to get us out of our current waking nightmare any more than Imagine did in 1971, but Ono’s gift for making change seem possible remains undimmed
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  8. 6.5 |   Under The Radar

    While these 13 tracks are new versions of early highlights, they sound like fresh statements, with lyrics that are as strikingly relevant as ever
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  9. 6.3 |   Pitchfork

    An endurance of idealism threads together these 13 reimagined protest songs, collected from four decades of albums. But their tempered presentation reveals a profound generational disconnect
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  10. 6.0 |   musicOMH

    If by representing these protest songs Ono intended to convey how little has changed since she first recorded them in the spirit of social activism then she has succeeded, but Warzone also highlights how the conversation has evolved
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  11. 6.0 |   Q

    Left to her own devices, she radically strips back her earlier material and it works. Print edition only

  12. 6.0 |   Tiny Mix Tapes

    After years working as an experimental pop bellwether and then taking cues from the boundary-pushing artists she inspired decades later, Yoko Ono has produced an album that mediates between a global and personal past and future. The former is uncomfortable and the latter uncertain. War is Hell in Paradise
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  13. 6.0 |   The Independent

    Although the album has its cacophonous moments (the title track opens with elephants, gunfire, wolves, dogs and possibly a forklift backing up), many of the pieces are surprisingly pared down
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  14. 6.0 |   The Skinny

    On Warzone 13 songs from Yoko Ono's back catalogue are reimagined with the greatest care and dedication offering a sensitivity that is needed in our world now as much as ever
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  15. 6.0 |   Evening Standard

    Is it possible to like an artist more for making an album you would happily never have to hear again?
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  16. 2.0 |   The Arts Desk

    Her singing might best be compared to your Nan’s attempts at holding a tune after several too many Christmas sherries
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