JOHN LENNON SOMETIME IN NEW YORK CITY Capitol

Sometime in New York City is the one album this Lennon-phile has avoided, mostly because of the bad rap the 1972 album has gotten down the years as a weak and wrong-headed collection of agitprop protest tunes, but also because the few songs I’ve heard from it — "Woman Is the Nigger of the World," "New York City," "John Sinclair" — suck. Listening to the entirety of this remastered reissue is a painful experience. Not only is the production muddled (and Yoko Ono’s new remix doesn’t add much), but the performances are unfocused, the sentiments addle-pated, and the politics naive. Sure, John (and Yoko, who co-wrote much of the album) had his heart in the right place: he fervently believed that addressing the worldly ills of the early ’70s in song might make a difference, and his commitment to ending the Vietnam War was unwavering. But these tracks — pedantic, topical, elitist — show that a latter-day Dylan he was not. And since Sometime was universally trashed at the time of its release and became his poorest-seller to date, the message was lost. Refer to the Beatles’ "Revolution" or his own "Give Peace a Chance" if you need a dose of John the Protest Singer.