antiMusic.com: Plastic Yellow Band

Plastic Yellow Band - Breathe Air

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The name that always seemed to be coming back to mind while listening to Plastic Yellow Band's Breathe Air is World Party. Like World Party, Plastic Yellow Band (which reads an awful lot like John and Yoko's Plastic Ono band, intentionally), is pretty much Gerry Jennings' one-man-band. Similarly, there is the obvious influence of the Beatles - on both World Party and Plastic Yellow Band.

While Jennings has a soft side, exemplified by the male-female duet on ballad "I Want to Feel Your Love," I tend to like his music best whenever he becomes heatedly loud and angry. This happens during "Nervous Stuff," where psychedelic electric guitar and affected vocals find him railing against the craziness of world politics. Similarly, "Oil Kings," which begins quietly with acoustic guitar, soon escalates into a stomping rocker.

This album closes with the three-part "Sunlight," which includes positive lines like "Say hello to sunlight and breathe in" and "I see the light breaking through the clouds." These are much more piano-oriented, rather than guitar-oriented and contrast with much of what precedes them.

It would be easy to make a Yoko Ono joke here because of this act's similarity to the Plastic Ono Band. But I'll resist; this music is too good to sully with time warn rock jokes. It really is good.