So, a new Yes album. Time was they came thick and fast - in the early 70's at least annually, and even in the 90's they managed one on average every two years. The longest gap between albums up to now was four years between "Big Generator" and "Union", and that was interrupted by the in-all-but-name Yes album "Anderson-Wakeman-Bruford-Howe". But the gap between the underrated (or at least under-sold) "Magnification" and "Fly From Here" has been a comparatively huge ten years (though that's nothing for a Kate Bush fan). It's been a long wait. Worth it?My copy arrived on Saturday, and has barely been out of my ears since then. It's been an exciting time, because despite being a Yes fan of many years standing, this is probably only the fourth time that I've heard a new Yes album when it's actually been brand new.
To explain (and further delay giving my opinion on the new opus), I didn't get "into" Yes until just before I went to college in the 80s, and at the time was more interested in the back catalogue than what they were doing at the time - Close To The Edge meant more to me than "90125", which I didn't really listen to much at the time it came out, despite loving "Owner Of A Lonely Heart". Ironically, at the time I met the woman who's now my wife (in 1989) I didn't own my own copy of "90125", but she did. Ironic, because she basically hates prog rock!
My first (nearly) brand new Yes album was "Big Generator", released in September 1987, and which I was given as a Christmas present that year, on cassette at a time when a personal stereo meant a cassette player, and mine was in almost constant use. I can still remember listening to the album for the first time on that very personal stereo, sat at our dining room table (still groaning under the weight of leftover turkey and mince pies - me and the table) on Christmas night. It's a weird time, Christmas night - all the excitement is over and you may be left feeling contented after a good time or disappointed if the day didn't quite live up to expectations. I think on balance I was probably feeling more of the latter that year, still (just) in my teens, unsure about how college was going, trying to recapture the excitement of childhood christmases and failing. But the music on that album was not a disappointment. It's not considered a classic these days by the Yes cogniscenti (whoever they are) but I love it - a nice fusion of the "new" sound of 90125 with a more old fashioned Yes songwriting style - "Shoot High, Aim Low" is a great mix of the two for me, and the three "love" titles were all excellent prog-pop numbers. It's still one of my favourites, and good for the gym!I suppose ABWH was also a new Yes album, really, and that also came on cassette, one of the last I bought in that format, and the energy on that album was phenomenal. It felt like getting a brand new "classic" Yes album - why I never went to see the tour I don't know, but I didn't go to many gigs back then - probably a case of nobody to go with (by this time I'd met my future wife and she went to one prog gig with me and swore never again - until Steve Hogarth joined Marillion, but that's another story!) - that, and a lack of money too!
Then came "Onion", so called by Rick Wakeman because it brings tears to the eyes! The first new Yes album I got on CD (yes, I remember when they were new-fangled, kids), and my major reaction was "hmmmm". It felt like there was a decent album (or two!) in there trying to get out but failing, smothered as it was in session musicians and a lack of general creative drive. The concept was a union, but there was no unifying vision. There are songs on there I like, but nothing really special. And that was, basically, when I stopped buying new Yes albums, at least for a while. When they came out I was not inspired by the covers of Talk or Open Your Eyes, they looked too poppy for my tastes at the time, although I've since bought them and am growing to appreciate them on their own merits.
In the middle came the two "Keys to Ascension" CDs, and although the covers looked good I'm not a big fan of live albums and wasn't shelling out that much money for live music with what looked like a couple of token studio tracks thrown in as bait. Of course, I've since found out what an idiot I was for thinking that, as I bought the studio tracks when they were re-released as "KeyStudio" and discovered the best Yes music since, well, "Going For The One", probably. Rick's right, they should have released them as one studio album at the time and properly promoted it, it's the great "lost" Yes album and had I found that as a brand new album I'd have wet myself with excitement at how good it was!"The Ladder" in 1999 looked right, Roger cover, almost the right line-up, but still I couldnt be tempted to buy it when it first came out. Not sure why - was it because I'd heard the line about each new album being their return to form too often before, when it wasn't really? The second hand copy I bought a couple of years later proved it actually was, and I'd missed another opportunity to enjoy new Yes music when it was still fresh!
Although by the time of 2001's "Magnification" I'd started to catch up with the back catalogue and becoming a serious Yes fan at last, I think I was still late in getting that album - probably because at the time my internet access was rare and I had no idea the album was out! Once I'd spotted it in a shop some time later, it was almost as good as getting it fresh, as it was great new music that to me sprang out of nowhere. I then saw the "classic" line-up live several times in the early part of the 2000s, and my eagerness for a new album from them built up and built up and built up until... nothing. They didn't record. Then when they announced plans for a 2008 tour AND recording after that, I was so excited. Then Jon Anderson's near death experience put paid to that, and since then all the shenanigans and controversy over replacing Jon with Benoit David from a Yes covers band, and then announcing the were recording an album with Benoit and not Jon. What a stupid idea, I thought.
I was wrong.
I've blogged before about how much more interested I became when I heard Trevor Horn was involved, and that Fly From Here was finally going to get the proper studio treatment it deserved, and that got more interesting when poor Oliver Wakeman was basically fired in order to get Geoff Downes back into the band. I'm a big Buggles fan, and I loved the "Drama" album, so much as I would have loved a new Jon-led Yes album, this was almost as good.
SO - enough stalling, I've had the new album three days, what do I think? I think it's going to be several weeks before I listen to anything else, that's what. I think it's excellent, and to be listening to it the day before it's even released in the US (and as it sits at number 18 in the UK midweek album charts) sends a lovely shiver down my spine.
The huge "Fly From Here" suite is all I could have hoped for, and more - I'm even growing to love the originally jarring "bumpy ride" section which felt like an escapee from "Relayer" on first hearing. Benoit's voice is beautiful, and weirdly sometimes sound as much like Trevor Horn as it does like Jon (on some tracks you'd swear it was Jon, really) but is also showing some signs of finding his own voice too. I loved the demo versions on the re-release of The Buggles second LP, but the full Yes version is just so much more... more! Big, dramatic, tense, non-specifically nostalgic, it's a heady brew. I wasn't sure about seeing them live but I just have to be in a concert hall to see and hear them play this live. Steve Howe in particular seems to have added the magic touch to these tracks. Brilliant.
The rest of the album has taken longer to appreciate after such a big "opener", but there's good stuff to be found. The Squire-led "Man You Always Wanted Me To Be" could be a track on "Open Your Eyes" but it would be one of the better ones, and Chris and Benoit's voices do blend so well, like Chris and Jon's always did. The way Jon was dropped was fairly shitty, but just listening to Benoit's voice on its own merits, there's still magic there. Really.
"Life On A Film Set" surprised me because it's another song that was in demo form on The Buggles "Adventures..." CD, there called "Riding A Tide" and much sketchier than this startling new version. Again I think it's Steve Howe who adds the missing ingredient (that and the world's best rhythm section, of course).
"Hour of Need" is one of the few tracks to feature any contribution from Oliver W, and unsurprisingly sounds the most (Rick) Wakeman-ish in terms of keyboards, despite being a Steve Howe composition. This and the closing "Into The Storm" appear to be the main survivors of the album they might have made with Oliver, and they suggest that such an album would have been equally rewarding. The last track in particular, being one composed by all the members of Yes (at that stage), is perhaps the most tantalising, and one can't help wondering what else was discarded from those first sessions that might be worth digging up. The "Armies of angels" section in particular is stunning, and here Benoit seems to have his own voice at last.
Funnily enough, despite my praise of Steve Howe on the rest of the album, my least favourite track is his (apparently obligatory) solo acoustic guitar number, but I was never a big fan of them. It could grow on me though.
And now, I'm much more excited about (a) seeing this version of Yes live and (b) the possibility of them making more albums, and much more frequently, please!
Of course, if Jon and Rick were ever tempted back into the fold, that would be great too, but then they're busy working with Trevor Rabin. Now that's a mouth watering idea - never a dull moment as a Yes fan!
