Yes or No? Tales from Trollographic Oceans

[Trollheart]

Album title: Big Generator
Year: 1987
Personnel: Jon Anderson (Vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Tony Kaye (Keyboards, piano), Alan White (Drums, percussion), Trevor Rabin (Guitars)

Comments: When has a prog rock group, who have been churning out albums for years or even decades, not had musical differences and difficulties? You can talk about Genesis and The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, or Pink Floyd's slow taking over by Roger Waters on The Wall and The Final Cut, but to be fair, few prog bands featured such an almost revolving door policy as have Yes. RIck Wakeman would leave and rejoin the band five times, Jon Anderson three times - Steve Howe, Alan White, Chris Squire, Geoff Downes - everyone seems to have been all but a part-time member in ways, and the band looks not to have really had what you could call a stable lineup for very long, in terms of musical history.

With so many people coming, going, disagreeing, feuding and fighting, forming cliques and having different ideas about musical direction, it's not that surprising that Yes could certainly not be called a happy family, perhaps not even a dysfunctional one. The period following the 90125 tour was, though, apparently, one of the worst in the band's history. In 2023, Rabin admitted that completing Big Generator had "almost killed me. I had to salvage the whole thing and mix it on my own with no-one in the studio. It was traumatic. My stomach lining went, but I did finish the record." And he would not be the only one. Anderson fought with Squire, Kaye fought with producer Trevor Horn, who never worked with the band again, and to use an old hippy quote, there could not have been any good energy in any of the numerous studios they tried to record in.

The rather unexpected success of the previous album brought its own problems. Having been the first album on the Atco imprint of Atlantic Records for the band, a follow up was demanded, especially a hit single, and one thing any band - but especially one like Yes, used to 20-minute epic side-long suites and certainly unfamiliar with the records charts - dreads is the pressure to come up with a hit. It almost always backfires on the label (see Prince's early work as an example) and can stifle creativity. Hits, in my opinion, should not be written as such: if a song gets airplay and does well in the charts, if enough people want to buy it, that should be a happy by-product of the writing process, not the other way around. The fact that so many artists try - or are told to - write hit singles could, to me, go a long way towards explaining some of the total dross that ends up in the charts, even at number one. But that's another story.

As I noted in the overblown intro to the last album, this one was in fact the first full Yes album I had heard. Well, that's not quite true: I think I heard a cassette of Drama a year or so prior, but it made no impression on me. So at this point, my only flirtation with Yes was a vague remembrance of the single "Wondrous Stories" and Jon Anderson's work with Vangelis, specifically their chart singles "I Hear You Now" and "I'll Find My Way Home", and that was more through my interest in Vangelis than Anderson. But once I heard this I loved it, and reading about all the strife and unrest and disunity that attended it bemuses me, because it certainly doesn't sound like an album the band didn't have fun making. But then, these are professionals, and who can detect such strained relations in any of the other three albums I mentioned above?

Big Generator continues the move away from the longer prog rock songs Yes had been known for (perhaps why it appeals so much to me) while allowing a certain, shall we say, progressive rock sensibility to leak in to some of the longer songs. But primarily it's an album of, again, pop/rock songs and airworthy tracks, and it did, in the end, yield another hit single, though Yes would never again reach the rarefied heights of number one, either here or in the USA. They're just not made that way, and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" has to be seen as an aberration.

Also, remember that though the others had input into it, much of what went onto the album came from tracks and songs Trevor Rabin had already written or partially written, and with Jon Anderson's ideas for longer, more esoteric material ("I wanted to jump on a Stravisnky-ism", said Anderson) shut down by Horn, it's Rabin's music that we get to hear.

For me (although I heard them in reverse) it's pretty much 90125 Part II in the same way as the next one, Union, can be considered a continuation of or sequel to the single Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe album, though whether or not they moved away from that style afterwards I have yet to find out.

There's almost a false sense of security built here early for the classic Yes fan, as, unlike the previous album, this one fades in on swirling synth and with almost Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies, but then the drums kick in and the orchestral hits start piling on as "Rhythm of Love" opens the album, Rabin's guitar of course very much in evidence. It is, to be fair, almost what Atco wanted: could be "Owner of a Lonely Heart" rewritten, though it would not get them another number one, as I said: this in fact just scraped into the top 40 Stateside and did nothing over here, though it did get to number 2 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart, whatever that is. It's another fine slice of radio-friendly almost AOR, with nice but not entirely dominant keys by Tony Kaye, and both Rabin and Anderson in fine voice.

Another set of vocal gymnastics, similar perhaps to the opening of "Leave It" kicks in the title track, and you can certainly hear where Horn has taken control on this, though Anderson's ghost is very detectable in the esoteric lyric. It's a much harder track, though, than almost anything on 90125, close enough to hard rock really, plenty of punchy guitar trading licks with orchestral hits and stabs, and some truly immaculate timing on a stop/start section in the song. It's not the best track on the album by any means, but again, like its predecessor, I don't believe there's a single bad track here. Some very phased or some damn thing guitar gives the midsection solo an almost otherworldly feel, and again I hear The Art of Noise nodding in appreciation.

Everything slows down then for the first of two ballads, slow, susurrating drums and soft synthscapes ushering in "Shoot High, Aim Low", with a haunting guitar motif from Rabin and slow, measured, almost funereal drumming from Andy White. Lovely Spanish guitar from Rabin adds another level to the melody, as does a very effective solo drum part - not a drum solo, as such, it's quite short - where White takes over the tune for a moment before bringing everyone else in with him. Incidentally, I was told by my mate this song was about Bonnie and Clyde, but can find nothing to support that, so either he made the assumption or he was just having me on. Still a fantastic track, and quite reminiscent (now that I can say it) of early Yes music.

Ramping everything back up then for "Almost Like Love", with brass and fast-paced drumming and a growling guitar riff that takes you by the throat, and organs that sound almost spiritual. Rabin says the song was semi-inspired by Phil Collins' switch to salsa and jazz on "Sussudio", but for me, this is a much better way to integrate that genre into your music. It's just a joyful piece, something you want to dance to, and the horns really make the song. The end section, where Anderson just goes wild on the lyric, is one of my favourite parts on the album. The "big hit single" is next, and while the band worked on most of the other songs, this is entirely Rabin's song, and in fact he had been writing it for Stevie Nicks. I could see it working for her. It opens with a violin and cello string introduction then a powerful chunky guitar riff cuts in, reminding me again of the number one  hit, but it's somewhat more moderately paced, and again you can see the idea of appealing more to the younger, female fans who may have liked "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and wanted more love songs. It's not a ballad, but it is a love song, and while Yes may have had these on previous albums, this seems to me (obviously, as it was meant to be) more an actual attempt at writing a hit single and a love song all in one. This one did better than "Rhythm of Love", getting to number 30, and topped that Mainstream chart. Again, the UK sniffed and said "Pooh! That's not Yes! Why, there's not even three parts to the song! The very idea!" etc.

I like the little harmonica bit in it too, seems to be just thrown in for fun, and then it's the first track on the album that ends without fading, smashing out on a big echoing guitar chord, and into one of two I guess you could say epics, as such. "Final Eyes" runs for just over six minutes and opens on a lovely acoustic guitar and typical Anderson vocal, pretty much solo until the second chorus, when the whole thing explodes into life, a lovely little softer midsection completing the song. I would say that the lyric is somewhat lacking, as they just seem to repeat the same verse each time, but then the music is so good it kind of doesn't matter. One of those songs I mentioned which nods very much back in the direction of the old Yes classic progressive rock themes.

Another fade and into "I'm Running", which actually is the longest track on the album, just shading the seven and a half minute mark, and opens with an almost Howesque guitar riff and this time nods forward, towards the likes of "Teakbois" on the ABWH album, some really nice marimbas or vibes or xylophone or something like that, shades of mid-80s Peter Gabriel here too I feel. Great buildup in the midsection, another fine stop/start part, and does someone blow a kazoo there? Either that, or a duck got into the studio. The ending keyboard riff is very familiar but I've never been able to place it - oh hold on! Years later he gets it! It's "Can-Utility and the Coastliners", isn't it? The closing riff on the last track on side one of Genesis's 1972 Foxtrot. Well, that didn't take long did it? Only 25 years or so to figure it out.

Anderson gets his way in the end though, and I like to think, as his swan song, in a way, he metaphorically escaped from the room Horn had locked him in and scribbled down and slipped the lyrics to the other band members as "Holy Lamb (Song for Harmonic Convergence") has his airy-fairy new age fingerprints all over it, and is a gentle and relaxing and indeed triumphant way to close the album. Lovely acoustic piece with rising vocal harmonies, obviously, and a soft little fade out, the album tip-toeing its way out as it waves goodbye, as does Anderson, who would depart the band after this album.

No extra tracks, by the way, other than remixes and re-recordings of tracks already on the album, and I don't do those. As Jesus once said, fuck that shit.

Afterword: Look, I'm completely aware that this and the previous album divide Yes fans. Those who've been with them since the self-titled sneer and frown at it and call it not a Yes album, and those who had perhaps gotten a little bogged down in all the epics and mystical lyrics perhaps see it as a breath of fresh air. Some will say Big Generator presided over, or even caused, the split within the band; some will blame Horn, some Wakeman for leaving, others will just shrug and say they like it or don't. I haven't that much invested in Yes, so for me, this, 90125, ABWH and Union constitute, mostly, what I know (or knew) about Yes, and I liked them all.

Having listened to their seventies output, I still place these albums as my favourites of theirs, and you can talk about Close to the Edge till you're blue in the face, and it can win all the awards there are, but I still prefer the era these albums came out. I don't know how I'll feel after I progress beyond The Ladder, which is the last actual Yes album I heard, but I love this one, and I always will. So...

Rating: 10/10
Yes or No? Oh hell damn Yes![/i][/i]

[Trollheart]

Im always trying to find more Yes that I like but right from the start they peaked with Beyond and Before to my ears. Incredibly rocking sound that they never got back to.

I'm no expert on them, but this was literally their first song, the first track on their first album, and you think they peaked then? Are you not a CTTE nut? The sound on the debut was vastly different to what they ended up playing, like a lot of prog bands (look at Genesis: began as a folk band mostly, or The Moody Blues, a straight-out blues band). Not sure if you'd appreciate the more electronic, poppy version of mid-1980s Yes, but it might be worth your giving it a try.

[Trollheart]

Following Anderson's departure he hooked up with fellow alumni Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman and Bill Bruford to form the short-lived and surely hardly rolling off the tongue Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe, who released one album in 1989. I'm not including that here for two reasons: one, it's not technically seen as a Yes album, as the remaining members of the band, though they did not release any new albums at that time, retained the name and copyright (hence the unwieldy name for the new ex-Yes group) and also I've reviewed it already. If you really want to read my thoughts on it they're here.

After writing material for what was to have been the second ABWH album, Anderson and his buddies got back together with the band, Yes now becoming for a short time an eight-piece, and consequently the second ABWH album became the thirteenth Yes album.

Album title: Union
Year: 1991
Personnel: Jon Anderson (Vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Rick Wakeman (Keyboards), Tony Kaye (Hammond Organ, Piano), Alan White (Drums, percussion), Steve Howe (Guitars), Trevor Rabin (Guitars), Bill Bruford (Drums)

Comments: Considering the in-fighting that attended this album too (obviously hatchets were not buried, and old enmities still simmered) it's a little laughable that they chose the title they did. While this may have been a union of two bands - or rather, two halves of one band - it really was more of a merger; those who had left the band returned to it, brought their music and were subsumed back into the parent entity. But arguments over who would play what, whose music would be used and what direction the album should take raged on, even without the presence of Trevor Horn. And yet, again, this is not the sense you get from listening to the album. Rather, it's a feeling of a band who have been away from each other too long getting back together and really enjoying themselves. Just shows you, surface impressions can really fool you.

With Kaye's already-written-of contempt for synthesisers, Trevor Rabin had had to play most of the keys on the last two albums, but now Rick Wakeman was back, and he was happy to sit behind a bank of keyboards, leaving Rabin free to concentrate on his guitars. Even so, their producer, Jonathan Elias, seemed to think that the work was substandard and, as both Wakeman and Howe had solo engagements to honour during the recording of the album, he brought in session musicians to flesh the songs out, to both the original players' disgust. Well, you couldn't blame them, could you? Elias was basically saying this isn't good enough, and nobody wants to hear that.

Union indeed. And yet the album was a roaring success, returning the now-reformed Yes to the top ten, the album getting to number 7 and 15 in the USA, more or less continuing the success of the last two albums. To some degree, this was built upon by the renewed interest in the band via ABWH, whose only album had also done very well on both sides of the water. However with the much longer songs and the suites on that album, their label saw no hit singles - indeed, nothing that could be played on the radio - and refused to greenlight and bankroll a second attempt, which led to the members reforming with Yes into one band. It probably suited nobody, as Bruford, Wakeman and Howe left after the tour to promote Union; Rabin and Kaye would leave after the next album.

Whether it's ironic or not, the album opens on "I Would Have Waited Forever", with a big a capella performance by Anderson, then a punchy melody very reminiscent of the previous album (as in, Big Generator drives along, Anderson certainly sounding happy to be back. Another great group vocal harmony piece leads into a fine solo vocal from Anderson against a nice acoustic guitar with what may be some digital piano before it takes off again, certainly gets things going with a bang. Those orchestral hits are back again, some trippy echo reverb or something, with a great building guitar riff that powers into a rising solo. This was originally one of the songs slated for the second ABWH album, as are most of the tracks,eight in all.

Another powerful track, the appropriately-named "Shock to the System" opens with an in-your-face hard rock guitar punch that grinds all over the place, and with a twiddly little guitar riff just before the chorus like a leitmotif of sorts. The hooks present in the last three (even four, if you include ABWH) albums are here in abundance, and this is another album I can sing along with, something I can't say of the seventies material. The first of two instrumentals is next as Steve Howe displays his talent on "Masquerade", which slows things down nicely after the exuberant start the album has made. It's calm and relaxed and introspective - it's a Howe acoustic guitar instrumental; what do you want me to tell you?

These were all, if you will, ABWH songs, but "Lift Me Up", which seems to have been the catalyst for the reformation, having been given to Anderson by Rabin so that they'd have a single they could release off their second album, is a Rabin original. Anderson decided instead to explore getting back into Yes and merging the bands, and so here we are. Like almost all of the South African's songs, this is catchy to the max, and you can see why it would have served as a single, with its upbeat, cheerful lyric and hook-laden melody. It is built, of course, on a solid guitar riff as well as keyboard arpeggios which hark back to some of Wakeman's best work with Yes and provides a glance back to their real prog rock days.

A very old-style Anderson piece, "Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day" runs on a lovely Kaye piano melody with some synth backing from Wakeman, the second part kicking into life on Rabin's screeching guitar and a marching drumbeat very reminiscent of "City of Love", this was in fact a song started by Elias and so I guess you'd call it the second "original Yes" track. It's definitely another of the standouts on an album almost of standouts for me, with a great call-and-response vocal from Anderson near the end and some powerful orchestral hits to wrap it up, taking us into another of Rabin's solo efforts, the reggae-influenced "Saving My Heart", on which he plays everything and shares vocals with Anderson. He's even more in control on "Miracle of Life", another of his songs on which this time he sings lead vocals and plays all instruments, with Anderson adding some extra vocals, though his open the song once the vocals begin, which is a few minutes into its seven minute plus run. It absolutely piledrives its way in on rushing drums, busy guitar and piping organ, like something out of Yes's 70s catalogue, and yet somehow fresh and new.

Even the double-tracked a capella vocal is classic seventies Yes, but it's Rabin's song; you'd imagine he must have been listening to albums such as Fragile and Going for the One to have captured such a sound. There's a lush, dramatic synth which trades licks with a frenetic guitar to open "Silent Talking", another ABWH track with another long instrumental in somewhat the vein of early Yes material, Anderson's vocal seeming a little swamped by the music in the first part, the guitar riff surely taken from Asia's debut album. Halfway through the song slows down and rides almost entirely on acoustic guitar backing Anderson's much clearer vocal with harmonic backing.

Another powerful dramatic synth backing for "The More We Live - Let Go", Anderson taking control again, slow hollow drumming punching out the rhythm, very cinematic and stately in its progression. An almost "Riders on the Storm" intro gives way to a clear, angelic vocal from Anderson for "Angkor Wat", very much driven by Wakeman's ethereal keyboard soundscapes and effects, really something that would not be out of place on an Anderson solo album, and ending with a spoken piece in Cambodian. Very zen indeed. Kicking things back into life then, "Dangerous (Look in the Light of What You're Searching For)" shoulders its way past all the poetry and spiritual crap as Rabin hammers through the melody with a big growling guitar riff that, again, you can't help but compare with their number one hit. Orchestral hits and squealing keys attend the track, but it's led by the guitar, which has control pretty much all of the way through. Another pitch-perfect a capella vocal performance, it's a further triumph of the melding of these two entities who prove so much more than the sum of their parts.

"Holding On" is a more old Yes-centric song, a real vehicle for Jon Anderson with its repeated opening vocal, the interesting lyric "When you find the perfect union, you gotta follow it." Definitely in the more progressive rock than pop vein. "Evensong" is fifty seconds of bass and drums which I consider throwaway really and the album ends on "Take the Water to the Mountain", the only solo Anderson-penned track on the entire album, a little plodding and basic, and not what I would have chosen to have ended the album with, but that's almost the only negative thing I have to say about it, despite all the hate it gets from all quarters.

On extra track, released on both the European and Japanese recordings, "Give and Take" is okay but really nothing that special, a sort of straight rock track that jumps along nicely but doesn't, for me, add anything to the album. In fairness, it doesn't detract from it either.

Afterword: It's easy to see this as the natural progression from ABWH's album; many of the tracks have that sort of structure, where they're almost made up of two or three - admittedly much shorter - parts, which could all but qualify them as mini-suites, and you can see how they would have fit on a larger concept album. The melding of 1980s Yes with ABWH works perfectly for me, though the album got almost nothing but criticism. Still one of my favourites, and barely a weak track to be found. Hell, even the band disagree with me, but when has that ever stopped me making up my own mind?

Rating: 9.5/10
Yes or No? Fuck everyone and absolutely Yes!

[Trollheart]

Somewhat of a red face for me, as I believed up to now that the next Yes album was The Ladder, but it must have been just the next one I got, as it's five years down the line yet. After the release of Union and the already-mentioned departure of three-quarters of what had been ABWH, there were no more real Yes albums for a few years. To fill the gap, no less than three compilations were released, the first being a four-disc box set, Yesyears, released months after Union. This flurry of retrospectives was due to Yes parting company with Atlantic/Atco and signing to Arista (the same label, coincidentally or not, as Asia, where Howe and Downes had both played), part of the deal being that the former label retained the rights to Yes's catalogue up to that point. And what self-respecting label passes up the chance to make a buck out of fans by foisting collections, best-ofs, boxsets and rarities on them?

But of course, one box set is not enough, and so in September we got Yesstory, which is, believe it or not, Yesyears condensed down to two discs, but without the live material and rarities. Finally, they squeezed it down even further and attempted to squeeze more cash out of Yes fans with Highlights: The Very Best of Yes in 1993. Now, I've spoken and ranted at length about this before, but you do have to wonder how the third compilation could be so titled: if it was "the very best of Yes", what were the other two? Nearly the best? Not as good? Grasping fuckers.

Oh yeah: also released in 1993 was An Evening of Yes Music Plus, a live album by Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe which featured about two-thirds of their album and a ton of earlier Yes material, the tour being sort of what started the whole legal trouble off in the first place, as both bands claimed the right to use the Yes name. Anyway, with all that past, finally, in 1994, a now stripped-down and almost back to the classic lineup Yes released their fourteenth studio album.

And it wasn't The Ladder.


Album title: Talk
Year: 1994
Personnel: Jon Anderson (Vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Tony Kaye (Hammond Organ) Alan White (Drums, percussion), Trevor Rabin (Guitars, Keyboards)

Comments: This is where I begin my, if you will, future Yes journey. I've heard a few songs from this and other, later albums on playlists, but have never heard any of the albums from here on in all the way through, so this will be new for me. I must say before I begin that Yes seem to be a group fraught with problems. There's that van crash that almost wiped them out at the beginning, the many lineup changes and disagreements, legal woes, financial woes, and I've already written of Rick Wakeman's seriously bad luck, leading to the man being homeless and all but penniless for a long time. Now I read that the label on which this album was released went bust, which hurt its chances of getting the proper exposure. I wonder if anyone thinks there's a curse on Yes? Despite Anderson's spiritual almost transcendent attitude and beliefs, things seldom seem to be calm or simple in the Yes camp.

Be that as it may, Talk opens with acoustic guitar and a vocal harmony before electric bursts in and we're off. I must say, the basic melody reminds me very much of "In the City" by the Eagles. Hmm. Just the main riff. That's probably not good: the only thing Yes songs have reminded me of up to now has been, well, other Yes songs. And Asia ones. It's a pretty catchy song though and a good opener, once again driven by Rabin's guitar licks. "I Am Waiting" seems to be more of a laid-back song (the title perhaps harking back to the opener on Union) with a fine soaraway guitar solo running it in, and a nice soft vocal from Anderson when it comes in, the song thickening up on hard pounding drums and stronger, sharper guitar before falling back to the gentler tone of the opening.

Chris Squire's thumping pulsing bass leads in "Real Love", joined by Rabin's slightly phased guitar, but I would say that so far, these tracks have not been as immediately accessible as were those on Union; they take longer to get going, but when they do they're pretty damn good. Is that enough? Guess we'll see. The usual Yes vocal harmonies are on display of course, but I don't see the same hooks that were on the other album, not yet anyway. The odd echo effect on Anderson's vocal seems to me to be completely pointless. Rabin is in fine form, but the length of the tracks is a concern: I don't think any of them need to be this long and they do sound - especially here, at almost nine minutes - dragged out unnecessarily.

We're basically machine-gunned down by guitar riffs as "State of Play" explodes out of the speakers, the close-harmony work here excellent, but I will say I don't hear too much of the keyboards and wonder if Rabin has decided to push them to one side in favour of his guitar? I honestly can't say I'm fond of this track at all. It has its moments but mostly it's annoying. The only song, so far as I can see, written with an outside songwriter, "Walls" features a credit for ex-Supertramp founder Roger Hodgson, and has for me quite a 1973 ELO feel about it. I hear a lot of Hodgson's solo work here, lyrics like "I want to love/I want to give/I want to find another way to give" reflecting those from his "Give Me Love, Give Me Life" off his debut In the Eye of the Storm. A good enough song but not a Yes song, not for me.

"Where Will You Be" slows things down somewhat, running on a sort of marimba line with a certain Caribbean flavour and a nice chanted vocal, but there's a weird sense of some sort of musical or show tune about this song, can't quite put my finger on it. Just sounds, I don't know, wrong somehow. Also pretty boring. The album ends on a sort of three-part suite, which goes under the umbrella title of "Endless Dream". The first part is the introduction, on fast rippling piano and groaning guitar. It runs for just under 2 minutes and is titled "Endless Dream: Silent Spring" which then leads into the main theme, which is also basically the title track. "Endless Dream: Talk" runs for just under 12 minutes, opening on a sort of continuation of the piano line from the intro, though slower and with Anderson coming in on the vocal now, and it's pretty laid-back and relaxed until about a third of the way in.

Strange, quirky little synth sounds that could be being added to by a guitar talk box (which would be appropriate, given the album title) sputter all over the place, seeming incongruous to me, not at all sure why they're there, then it slips back into the more gentle groove the song has been running in, making the "interruption" even more weird and less understandable. Halfway through now and there are more standard synthscapes being laid down, very much in the old school Yes/prog rock way, the sort of thing you would imagine Wakeman might have enjoyed getting his teeth into. Goes a bit dark and dramatic then, with a certain sense of Pink Floyd circa A Momentary Lapse of Reason, as Anderson comes back in with the vocal, joined now by Rabin. Essentially though this is close to a 12-minute instrumental and a vehicle for both Rabin's guitar and synthwork. I like the almost hymnal quality of the closing vocal, then it's another two minutes of "Endless Dream: Endless Dream" to close the album with a pleasant little instrumental.


Afterword: I'd have to say I'm disappointed. Three years down the line and with the loss of the trio, Yes have almost reverted to their pre-Fragile days. The appearance of an epic as the closing track is clear evidence of this, and while the opening two tracks certainly have their hooks and their commercial appeal, much of the rest is overextended, bloated, and pretty much unnecessary. Instead of continuing to trim the fat, as they have been with the last three albums, Yes seem to have been adding it, and while there are only 9 tracks on this album, there's less important music than on the last one. I'm not going to remember any of these tracks; I'm certainly not going to be singing any of them.

Rating: 7/10
Yes or No? Not really, no.

[Trollheart]

I must admit, I've never heard of such a thing, but between 1996 and 1997 Yes decided to record new studio material but release it on a double album along with live material, so essentially you have a live album followed by some new studio stuff on the second disc. Then they did it again. These albums are entitled Keys to Ascension amd Keys to Ascension 2, and I was wondering if it was even worth my time reviewing them, as the vast majority of the music is live versions of stuff I've already heard, and I don't do live albums anyway.

Then I found out that the studio material from both albums was gathered together and put on a "compilation" album called Keys Studio, which makes more sense for me to review. However that only came out in 2001, so what I intend to do is leave both Keys to Ascension albums, continue on and then do Keys Studio when it comes up. Clear? No? Tough.

As it happens, the next "proper" studio album also hit the shelves in 1997. And this is it.

Album title: Open Your Eyes
Year: 1997
Personnel: Jon Anderson (Vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Billy Sherwood (Guitars, Keyboards) Alan White (Drums, percussion), Steve Howe (Guitars)

Comments: Tony Kaye is gone, so is previous leading light Trevor Rabin, and there's a new man on the keys and indeed the guitars, backing up the return of Steve Howe. Okay he's not a new man: Billy Sherwood has been involved with Yes since 1989, had joined the sessions to write what became Union (and had been considered as the lead vocalist in the absence of Jon Anderson) but then sort of dispensed with when the main man returned. This album seems to be something of a Frankenstein's monster, composed of original material written almost exclusively by Squire and Sherwood, and also some music used for, on, or intended for their other band, Conspiracy.

It's a heavy rocking start with those familiar vocal harmonies as "New State of Mind" kicks things off, a pretty exuberant feel to it, and perhaps a message in the title? After all, this is now pretty much Squire and Sherwood's band, Anderson and Howe only involved in terms of how they perform, neither involved really in the writing, despite being given songwriting credits. Seems to be a lot of stabbing brass here, probably on synth of course, but not a bad opener, and then the title track sort of reminds me of a cross between Asia and Journey, quite AOR in its makeup, keeps the pace pretty rapid and uptempo and it definitely has a great energy about it, perhaps even a new new Yes sound?

A very orchestral sound to complement the acoustic guitar intro to "Universal Garden", the pace slackening here but reminding me somewhat of ABWH's "Order of the Universe" at times. "No Way We Can Lose" is a simple little tune that isn't good or bad, it's just, well, there, though the harmonica is a nice touch. I find "Fortune Teller" to be a real throwback to their early days, which of course doesn't please me, and I have to say I become very bored with it very quickly, my old problem with 70s Yes music resurfacing in the good old 1990s. Sigh. There's a more dramatic, ominous feel to "Man in the Moon", but already it's getting harder and harder to care.

"Wonderlove" is somewhat more of a proper Yes song, a slower one with nice vocal harmonies, but that bugbear of mine, no hook to hang my interest on, is back to annoy me. None of these songs are in the least memorable, until we get to the shortest track, the first real ballad, though "From the Balcony" sounds very familiar, and I think it's almost an acoustic, slowed-down version of the opener? I guess "Love Shine" is not without its charm, but I don't think all that much of it, and "Somehow, Someday", though it starts off as a nice little pastoral acoustic ballad then turns into a slow marching anthem that does nothing for me. Yeah, even the little hints towards Ireland in the lyric don't attract me, sorry.

I originally looked in horror at the closer, to see it was almost 1974 again - 24 minutes long! But the notes say the song is only 5 minutes, then 2 minutes silence, then a "hidden track" which is over 16 minutes of birdsong, vocal snippets and effects. I mean, why? What's the fucking point? Is this not indulgence and arrogance taken to the nth level? What possible interest could anyone, even the most diehard Yes fan, have in listening to such nonsense for over a quarter of an hour? Words fail me. Well, they don't, obviously. What's "The Solution" like anyway, after all that? It's all right I guess, but I've just lost heart by now.

Afterword: If Talk was a disappointment, this is like learning Santa Claus don't exist (ssh! I'll tell you later) as there really is nothing decent I can point to here, and I feel like I've come back almost full circle. The songs are not memorable, don't inspire me, don't interest me and in general I find this album exceedingly boring, and forgettable.

Rating: 5/10
Yes or No? Absolutely no.

So now I've sort of reached a crossroads. I thought things were getting better, but Yes seem to have erased all the, as I see it, good music that characterised at least four albums during the 1980s and early 1990s, and gone right back to the boring, incomprehensible and unattractive music they purveyed all through the 1970s and early 1980s, and which did not interest me.

So, do I go on? Suppose I have to. I have seven albums left in their discography, including that Keys Studio thing, and I'm not going to leave a project half-finished. But I think I'll take a break now to reflect, listen to other music and push Yes to one side for a while. I just don't feel like listening to them now for a bit. I'll come back to this, no doubt, but I have to admit, I won't be in any hurry to do so.