Tuesday 14 June 2011

US Yes We Can - sound like Yes!

Listening to the latest CD from American proggers Glass Hammer (the succinctly titled "If") I was struck by just how much some bands from the other side of the pond want to be Yes. They're not content to just be influenced by them, they really really want to be Yes.

It's not all US Prog Bands, I know, but perversely they seem to be the ones I like, even while having a wry smile on my face at just how much they really want to be Yes. They do!

The prime example are semi-contemporaries from the 1970's, Starcastle. I first heard them via AOL radio's prog station (which I thought was defunct, but appears to be alive and well here, which is good as I heard a lot of things on there for the first time). Back to Starcastle - when I first heard them I thought it was a previously unknown Yes track, so close an approximation was the sound (and most of all the voice). It's funny, Jon Anderson has one of the most distinctive voices in prog rock but so many other singers sound like him. Go figure, as our American cousins would say. Even Yes have twice managed to find a soundalike when Jon has either quit or been edged out, first with Trevor Horn and more recently with Benoit David, who started in a Yes tribute act!

Although their first album from 1976 (the self-titled "Starcastle") might as well be by Yes, that's not necessarily a bad thing - because a lot of the time it's as good as Yes. Opener "The Lady of the Lake" is a classic, and leads to an album of lively wide-eyed rock with lots of keyboard trills and guitar runs, and lyrics about fire winds and stargates, all very cosmic, and a very innocent pleasure. I usually distrust recommendations of the "if you like this you'll like..." variety, but I challenge any fan of 70s Yes not to be charmed by this album. Unfortunately their follow ups "Fountains of Light" and "Citadel" from '77 and '78 respectively, while perfectly adequate, are just not as memorable, and there their story ended, at least for a few years. In recent years some of the original members picked up the baton again, and have played live intermittently and I believe have also released a new album, which I have yet to hear - and they've even had Rick Wakeman's son Oliver (also now a Yes alumni) on keys, bringing it all back to the original inspiration. 
 
A less obvious homage, partly because the Yes influence is tempered by almost equal parts of Genesis mellotron worship, is 1998's "Ad Infinitum" by the band of the same name. They were musicians that were obsessed with 70s (largely British) prog rock, and decided to use authentic instruments of the period (sort of like a baroque orchestra using proper harpsichords, I suppose) and write songs in the style of the bands they loved. You wouldn't find a British group doing this, they'd be too embarrassed, but the Americans seem much less fettered by such concerns, and are happy to expose themselves as prog-lovers of the old school. The vocals (by several singers, I believe) are less obviously Jon-a-likes, and the music is decent prog-fayre when you require the scratching of the mellotron (as Porcupine Tree put it). Worth searching out. And it is a Roger Dean cover, by the way!

In some ways the best and worst culprits are Glass Hammer - best because on some of their albums they have come closest to being Yes, and worst because on other albums they have shown their own equally excellent individual sound, and I do wish they'd do more like that. They've done a lot, starting out with Tolkien influenced songs that probably owed more to early Marillion or Pentangle than to Yes, but after a while the Yes-fest kicked in. Chronometree from 2000 is a good example, leaning heavily on the sounds of "Relayer", and a very Anderson-y lyrical tendency, especially when it comes to titles - "Empty Space - Revealer" and "An Eldritch Wind" open the album, none-more-Yessy, I'd say.

Even more so was the recent "Culture of Ascent" album from 2007 which featured not just a Yes cover ("South Side of the Sky") but also "vocalizations" (as opposed to just singing!) from JA himself. At least this album took Yes as a start point and then went off in a different direction, albeit one that never strayed too far from the spirit of the origin - maybe how "Fragile" would have sounded if they'd made it now with modern technology.

After a brave stab at being different with "Three Cheers For The Broken Hearted" their most recent album "If" might as well be titled "If We Were Yes" - they've ditched their previous male and female singers in favour of someone new who sounds more like Jon than Jon does these days, and with long tracks titled "Behold, The Ziddle", "Beyond, Within" and "At Last We Are" it's all gone just a bit too far. It may grow on me, but I'm struggling to get over the giggles at the moment because it all seems just too much. They've studied gene-splicing and come up with Dolly-the-Sheep in album form, a perfect Yes-clone that leaves one not quite sure if it's a glorious new dawn or a scary Frankenstein creation. As I say, it might grow on me.

It's all the sadder, though, because back in 2005 they produced a very fine album indeed, that was all their own - influenced, yes, but definitely Glass Hammer being themselves, not a photocopy of the bands they loved. "The Inconsolable Secret" (okay, dodgy title) is a double CD with just under 100 minutes of beautiful and stirring music, with a pseudo-Arthurian theme involving knights, kings, princesses and crowns that somehow manages to escape being twee or fey. The opening 15-minute "A Maker of Crowns" is a big favourite of mine, and I love the repeated lyric of "One stands - watching his king", it has so much undercurrent to it. I couldn't tell you what the story behind it is, something to do with the king's daughter and a rebellious knight, but it's moving in a way that the best legends are, even when you don't completely understand why they touch you. "If"? "If" only they would write more like this. It does have a cover by Roger Dean, though - you can't completely escape Yes!