YES

2014's Heaven & Earth is so flat. It's so soulless. It's bland, pedestrian, sleep-inducing, insipid, and every other synonym for "boring" there is. It's like if Air Supply or some other soft rock act decided to try to make a Yes album. Steve Howe's guitar never really takes the lead, and it usually ends up buried under a sheet of pillowy organ and gently-strummed acoustic guitar. I also get some awful echoes of worship music. I could absolutely imagine seeing songs like this being played at some church youth group.

"In a World of Our Own" is one of the rare high points on the album. It's got a strange, lurching rhythm, and the organ has some occasional crunch to it. The conclusion of "Light of the Ages" is another relative strong point.

I thought it was going to be close between Union and this for second-worst Yes album, but this makes me long for the relative dynamism of Union. Everything on Heaven & Earth is soft and flat. There's almost no sonic variation. At least the aesthetic trappings of Yes's sound save this from being relegated to the same cellar as Open Your Eyes.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

In 2008, while preparing for a tour with Yes, vocalist Jon Anderson suffered a severe asthma attack, and his doctor instructed him to postpone any performing for at least six months. Not wanting to delay the tour, the other members of the band (Squire, Howe, White, and keyboardist Oliver Wakeman (the son of Rick)) recruited Canadian singer Benoît David to replace Anderson.

After that tour, this new iteration of Yes returned to the studio to begin work on a new album. Based primarily around a suite written during the Drama recording sessions, Geoff Downes was brought in to replace the younger Wakeman on keys, and Trevor Horn produced.

This new album, 2011's Fly from Here, is fine. There are some good ideas here, particularly in the sprawling title track. David sounds closer to Trevor Horn than Jon Anderson, the main theme sounds more like a Buggles song than a Yes song, and the keys feel awfully glittery for my taste. Despite all this, the musicianship is top-notch, and it's a strong suite.

Beyond the title track, though? Mostly forgettable. "The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be" is anodyne and spineless. "Hour of Need" sounds like it could have been on Big Generator or Union in its glossy blandness. "Into the Storm" is something of a split decision for me. I dislike the vocals a lot?they sound like they're trying to be emotional and emphatic but come off flat, and the melody sounds forced. Instrumentally, though, it's top-notch.

"Life on a Film Set" is slow to get going, but it's one of the better (non-suite) songs on this album. It feels like a Yes track that could have been on Going for the One.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

Yes decided to push forward with just the four remaining members for their next album, 2001's Magnification. Rather than hire a new full-time keyboardist, Yes opted to record with a 60-piece orchestra, their first time doing so since their 1970 sophomore album, Time and a Word.

I may gush about The Ladder's weird, poppy goodness and Talk's aggressive prog experimentation, but 2001's Magnification is truly Yes's strongest recent output. I'd call it better than Going for the One and roughly on par with the Keys to Ascension 1 & 2 studio output. It's sad to say that this was the band's last great album.

Magnification opens with the title track. It's a rather light, floating song but not without impact. The rich strings are deftly accented by Chris Squire's bass playing, and the chorus is huge and grandiloquent. Not only is the sound quality rich, but it's a solid, catchy melody?one of the best since the band's classic era output.

"Don't Go" sounds like it could have fit in well on The Ladder. It's a bouncy, quirky, happy song, and the strings fill the space left by keyboards seamlessly. While this is the most Ladder-like song, quite a few songs feature choruses or passing musical ideas which share a lot DNA with that album.

Yes's decision to go full-bore with the strings was a brilliant move. If they'd been less bold, perhaps minimizing them, it could have come off much worse. "Give Love Each Day" opens with two minutes of orchestral music, sans rock instrumentation, before turning into a slinking, slowly-escalating piece.

"Can You Imagine?" is a reworking of a song originally recorded with XYZ and is a rare example of Squire getting lead vocals on a Yes song.

The two strongest songs on this album are also the two longest. Appearing back-to-back, the first is "Dreamtime". "Dreamtime" opens with Howe's speedy classical guitar lines topped with sweet strings and liquidous electric guitar. The verses are dark and oppressive. Chris Squire's bass has a biting twang, and brass is used much like an overdriven organ. Between all this are moments with subtle Middle Eastern influence. The song closes with two minutes of moody, spooky orchestral music, giving equal highlight to the strings and reeds.

"In the Presence Of" is a classic Yes-style multi-parted suite, albeit terser than most. In contrast to the preceding song, this one keeps its tone sunny and uplifting, a task uniquely well-suited to an orchestra.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

When Yes returned to the studio to record their next album, the songwriting process was much more collaborative, to great success. Their 1999 album, The Ladder, is Yes's best synthesis of their pop and prog leanings. It's a distinct-sounding album, full of influences and textures atypical of Yes's sound, including brief flashes of Latin and dance music. To further illustrate, Yes even use samples on this album.

The title track opens the album, and it's a strong three-part suite. The playing is dynamic, and once more on par with their classic efforts. Chris Squire's bass both cuts through to the front and supports Howe's lead guitar. Khoroshev's synthesizer choices are the best the band has had in nearly twenty years. (I really don't know what Wakeman was thinking in the '80s and '90s, and Rabin-era material minimized keys most of the time.)

"Lightning Strikes" is possibly the oddest song Yes have ever recorded. It opens with a sample of The Kinks' "Phenomenal Cat" before segueing into Latin guitar and then diving headfirst into dance-music-influenced synthesizers and electronic percussion. This is a real head-scratcher, but in a good way. The competing Latin and dance influences mesh shockingly well in the framework of Yes's progressive rock stylings.

In addition being Yes's weirdest album, The Ladder is also their happiest and sunniest. Most of the songs have a glowing quality about them, and Khoroshev's synthesizers are a major reason for this. "Face to Face" is another example of Yes embracing dance-y keys and fast tempos in a major key. Despite all this, they somehow managed to avoid coming off as cheesy or otherwise off-putting. Not all such experiments were completely successful, though. "Finally" feels somewhat clumsy and overblown.

"New Language" is the album's penultimate song and the best integration of this album's competing pop and prog influences. It vacillates between bouncy, happy, accessible moments and complex experiments, replete with extended solos. "New Language" is this album encapsulated in one song.

Unfortunately, this lineup of Yes would not last. Frustrated that Yes's live shows were now almost entirely their back catalog, Billy Sherwood quit Yes to pursue his own projects. Igor Khoroshev was fired from the band after being charged with sexual assault while on tour.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

Wakeman's departure threw the band into disarray. Tour plans were scuttled, and the remaining members went their own ways. Chris Squire began the songwriting process for a side project with longtime Yes producer and occasional studio contributor Billy Sherwood. This Squire/Sherwood material would eventually become the beginnings of the next Yes album, and Sherwood was brought on as a fulltime member of the band, handling additional guitars and some keyboards.

The result was 1997's Open Your Eyes, and this was truly Yes's nadir. Jon Anderson and Steve Howe claimed they were sidelined in the songwriting process, and it shows. The music here is mostly bland adult alternative-style rock. It's achingly generic and comes off as undercooked.

A few good ideas can be heard here. The opener, "New State of Mind" has some strong vocal harmonies, despite a notably un-Yes-like riff and awful synth tones. "Fortune Seller" sounds like a crappy, underdeveloped Yes song, as opposed to some other generic, crappy, underdeveloped song. Some workshopping could have saved this. And "The Solution" (or at least its first five minutes, at least; more on that shortly) is a passable hard rock song.

Most of this album though? Ugh. It just depresses me. The songwriting is so weak, so bland, so offensively inoffensive. I struggle to write about it, it's so interminably dull. What is there even to say about such snoozefests as "Wonderlove" or "No Way We Can Lose"? This album plods along, with every song nearly the same tempo, and the few speed variations all seem to be ballads. "The Solution" has a hidden track of 15 minutes of ambient nature sounds, chimes, and the occasional vocal snippet, which does absolutely nothing.

Open Your Eyes tries to be a Yes album at points, but it falls flat on nearly every attempt. The organ solo in "Fortune Seller" is one of few successes, and there is the occasional strong vocal performance. But when the high points are almost all vocal, that does not bode well for a band which has been historically known for instrumental virtuosity. It boggles my mind that this is the same guitarist and bassist who recorded "Heart of the Sunrise" and "Gates of Delirium".

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

Following the Talk tour, both Rabin and Kaye left Yes to pursue other projects. Sans guitar and keyboards, the three remaining members invited Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman to rejoin Yes and resurrect one of the band's classic lineups. This lineup recorded two lengthy new studio tracks, "Be the One" and "That, That Is". Rather than release these tracks as a part of a studio album they were packaged with the live album Keys to Ascension.

Keys to Ascension is a great album. The live material consists solely of their '70s output, and the studio stuff is great too. "Be the One" takes a bit too long to get going, but it's worth the wait. Wakeman finally figured out that farty synth brass is not an enjoyable noise, and Howe's style fits so much better than Rabin's.

The sprawling "That, That Is" opens with an extended acoustic guitar solo from Howe. That shifts to Anderson's babbling vocals, in a manner reminiscent of "We Have Heaven", but that's a brief stopover. The opening verse is tense and high-energy. Squire's bass squirms anxiously as the song plows forward. The suite has a million ideas in it, shifting deftly from one dynamic extreme to another.

After the release of Keys, Yes continued recording new studio material for a new album. Their record label had different ideas and slapped five new studio tracks onto another live album, titled Keys to Ascension 2. Irritated at this move, Wakeman quit the band. For the fourth time.

The five studio tracks on Keys 2 absolutely could have been (and should have been) released as an independent album. Unlike the earlier monstrosities of ABWH and Union, Yes's classic lineup managed to find a way to write music in their classic style without it feeling dated. The suites sprawl and build without meandering, and Anderson's and Squire's vocal harmonies sound much earthier, a huge improvement over the hyper-polished near-chorus that was present on Rabin-era Yes albums. The new studio material on these two albums are on par with much of the band's classic '70s output.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

In a change from his previous modus operandi, Rabin wanted to have a better relationship with Jon Anderson and involved him in the songwriting process from the get-go. At the same time, Chris Squire took a step back.

Talk was released in 1994 to mixed-to-negative reviews, but I have a weird soft spot for it. I openly acknowledge it's far from Yes's best work, but it's the first album where they sound like Yes since Drama. Well, some of the time, at least. Rabin still had a heavy hand in the songwriting, and it's a pretty pop-inflected album. The production is as slick as ever, and there are some nonessential tracks here.

The opening "The Calling" is cheesy as all get-out with a huge, radio-friendly chorus. But unlike anything on Union (or most of what was on Big Generator), it's actually catchy, and the band seem to have put some effort into it. But I can't be quite so kind to the next song, "I Am Waiting". This is another piece of evidence that Yes should not do ballads. Sappiness is not something they've ever been able to pull off.

The nearly-nine-minute "Real Love" feels like Yes's first true progressive rock song since The Buggles were in the band. It's slow-building, and Rabin's soloing feels quite David Gilmour-inspired. (It's not a very Yes-like solo, but it fits; this is a pretty Pink Floyd-y song.) Like elsewhere on this album, the chorus is built up to be huge and catchy, but the organ, crunching bass, and twisting guitar lines help it feel grand.

"State of Play" is another awkward big-riff song, and it suffers from a lot of the same ills as Big Generator. The aforementioned big riff is pretty good, but the verses are clumsy and tuneless. "Walls" (co-written by Roger Hodgson of Supertramp) is similar in its grandiose riffage, but it's a stronger song with some almost-country flavor.

Talk closes on "Endless Dream", Yes's first suite since "Machine Messiah", and it's a welcome return to form. It opens with rapidfire piano, huge, heavy guitar and bass, and pounding drums. This opening salvo, while not quite on par with the opening minutes of "Heart of the Sunrise", is in the same family. Part two is mostly slow and gentle, led by Tony Kaye's keys. It avoids pop sweetness and feels genuine. I'd compare it to "Wondrous Stories" or the "Soon" section of "Gates of Delirium". Layers of weird, froggy guitar lines build up under Yes's trademark group vocals while Alan White's drumming keeps the song churning and lurching forward in uneven starts and stops. "Endless Dream" ends on a softer note, floating on a sound which, while surely intended to feel majestic, comes off as dated.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

And so 1991's Union was born. This is effectively two bands performing on the same album. Jon Anderson rejoined Trevor Rabin's Yes while still fronting the ABWH material. (Squire also provided backing vocals on a few of the ABWH songs.) No song on this album has all eight members playing at once, though all eight would play a few songs together on the ensuing tour.

If that background sounds like a recipe for disaster to you, you'd be correct. Union is an ungodly, unfocused, overblown, poorly-written, and poorly-produced morass. In my personal ranking, I'd put this as their third-worst.

From its opening notes, Union signals a continuation of the sound palette of ABWH mixed with Trevor Rabin's hyper-80s songwriting style. Imagine the worst parts of Big Generator with ABWH's lack of focus, and it's clear why Rick Wakeman derisively calls this album Onion. The choruses are huge and cheesy. Listening to this album for this retrospective (for the first time in years) was a genuine challenge. Most of the songs here are in the five-to-seven-minute range, and they all feel so, so much longer.

In doing research for this piece, I found that most of Howe's and Wakeman's parts were overdubbed with session musicians, and that goes a long way in explaining the aggressively generic nature of this album. It's almost a parody of '80s hard rock at many points.

Yes did earn another Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental from this album with the song "Masquerade". But that's because it's a Steve Howe solo acoustic piece. Rabin didn't write it, and Anderson couldn't cheese it up. It's a nice enough little song, but it's not up to par with Howe's classic acoustic pieces of "Mood for a Day" and "Clap".

"Saving My Heart" is a relative high point on Union, insofar as it has an identifiable melody, and the chorus is pretty strong. It's a stupid piece of pure pop, but I'll take what crumbs of enjoyment I can get out of this album.

Union is a 70-minute monstrosity that serves as a testament to how poorly Rabin's songwriting style has aged, how important it is to select enjoyable synth tones, and the importance of band chemistry. Union's mega-Yes were fractious at best, and so much of this album feels paint-by-numbers. Following the Union tour, the BWH of ABWH left the group, returning Yes to its 90125/Big Generator lineup.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

It's?fine. There's nothing too egregious here, but it's mostly inoffensive, big-sounding 80s rock. There's a more extensive use of group vocals on this album than its predecessor, and the title track has some surprisingly odd moments. "Shoot High, Aim Low" is another relative strong point on the album, with its droning synth and organ and methodical pace. The guitar solo is pure '80s cheese, though in the bad way.

Big Generator also has its share of unspectacular moments. "Almost Like Love" is so corny it could have been grown in Iowa. It has that signature awful synth brass sound the '80s were renowned for, and Jon Anderson's rapid-fire vocal delivery feels like an aging band trying desperately to stay hip. "Love Will Find a Way" is another weak point on the album. It feels half-assed, and the group vocals sound weirdly thin and washed out. There's also a terribly out-of-place harmonica bit. I don't care how much Yes changes their sound; they're not the kind of band that can use a harmonica.

The album closes fairly strong. "Final Eyes" harkens back to some of the sounds off Olias of Sunhillow or the softer moments on Going for the One at points. "I'm Running" is the best song on the album. It's the only one that feels artistic or ambitious in any way.

Big Generator is perfectly adequate. It's generic, and even its worst moments are more aggressively inoffensive than actually bad. If you like super-generic, glossy, 1980s-style stadium rock, you'd probably like this album.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/

90125 is a pretty good album. It's just not a great Yes album. When I think of Yes, I think of "Roundabout" and "Close to the Edge", not "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Leave It". These songs are much shorter and more direct than anything else they'd ever done. There are still some vague hints of Yes's past life as a prog rock giant, but they're all quite minimal. The musicianship is top-notch, as would be expected, and the vocal harmonies are on point, particularly on "Leave It". The brief "Cinema" is another standout, having garnered the band a Grammy for Best Instrumental Rock Performance.

There is a generous amount of '80s cheese here. Everything has a super slick sheen to it, and a lot of the synth tones (played mostly by Rabin) feel sterile. Despite all this, I'd recommend this album. The band show a sharp sense for what works in songwriting, and the music never overstays its welcome.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/