The Yes Album by Album Thread (Part 2)

Ahmet Ertegun was apparently very excited when he heard Release Release. He asked them if the rest of the album was like it, and they told him it was!

I wonder what he thought when he heard the whole thing ...

 

Six Wives - to this day a Desert Island disc. This and Criminal Record (and to a lesser extent the two Retro albums) are the only Wakemans I have any time for.

 

Abilene (UK b-side of Don't Kill the Whale. North America got Release Release instead.)

 

Catching up:

The solo albums:
Man I tried listening to that Jon Anderson album for the first time the other day and it was like soundtrack music. Snoozer.
Squire's is the "best" to me I guess 'cause it sounds the least unlike Yes but his lead singing is not great and it totally feels like lesser Yes so what's the point. I used to own that record but would never want to listen to it when Yes records were right next to it.
Six Wives I think I listened to a couple of times and there are some cool parts.

Should be able to dig into some of the clips posted around GFTO and Tormato. It is certainly at this point where my personal Yes collection ends so I'll be relying on posted clips and Spotify/youtube but I look forward to going along the Yes journey with you guys just for the poops 'n' giggles 'n' nostalgia.

 

Thanks man that was a trip revisiting this one in detail, a track I have very mixed feelings about but haven't heard in so long. Memory is a funny thing.
Reading your post while listening drew my attention to the guitar 'cause I take it you're a guitar player? But yeah Howe's awesome here of course and I enjoyed the first 5.5 minutes or so of Awaken more than I remember- that odd time sweeping "verse," Anderson yelling random words on top of Howe's licks.

And, dig this y'all- has Alan White ever sounded better? I was really impressed with him while listening to this track.

As the piece winds down though I think I figured out what bothers me about Awaken- all that momentum is KILLED after Rick Wakeman dicks around and then everything slows down to a crawl. The last 6 minutes or so just sounds like the song is taking forever to end or something.

 

Interesting b-sides/outtakes from Tormato posted.
Countryside starts off promising but Chris Squire's busy rolling bass lines seem to run against the "folky" groove of the tune. Still, a potentially interesting direction the band could have explored if they were interested in scaling back the scope of their music (an idea which is not inherently bad, just depends on how and why it's done).

 

I agree. Heresy on my part but they could have shortened the slower part you refer to. It is somewhat anti climactic.
I play guitar and bass....poorly due to lack of practice and being an old geezer.
Thanks for your take on the breakdown.
You are right on about White on Awaken. Great drumming and percussion.

 

While 6 Wives is better than the other solo Wakeman I have heard, it really doesn't do anything for me.
I'd take Wakeman's brilliant playing on Fragile, CTTE, America and Morning Has Broken over everything else he has done with or without Yes put together.

 

I've mentioned this before on another thread - but they should've ended Awaken after the organ/chorus chord at approx. 2 minutes from the end. After that it just seems anti-climactic.

 

I didn't realize 6 wives had so many members of the Strawbs playing on it. I guess the hard feelings were behind them by '73.

 

Now is maybe the most potentially fun part of the thread for me- revisiting Yes music I dislike. I basically jump off the train at Going For the One but I'm curious to hear this stuff again with some distance between now and my younger proggier days.
Yesterday I listened to Tormato.

Future Times / Rejoice
I kinda like this! I mean it's not brilliant but it has a nice groove, Squire goes BWAH BWAH a bunch which is cool and I'm not sure what to make of that guitar sound, it's all thin and whiny but kind of works for this song.

Don't Kill the Whale
Yeesh. It's like a parody of MESSAGE songs. Not just the hit-you-over-the-head lyrical message but the awkward construction of the verses to cram the words in the music. KILL-ING that last HEA-ven beast. So clunky.

Madrigal
wiki: "A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras."
Well la-de-ca, aren't we fancy!
It's alright, I guess, if you wanted to hear Wondrous Stories with more twee, or Mood For Day played at the same time as other instruments. And I do! I like this track.

Release, Release
Yes rocks out, Anderson singing something about "our generation" at some point, which makes me wish I were listening to the Who now. I can make out Steve Howe's vocals 1:50 in, which is…uh, yeah.
I appreciate the energy here and Anderson's exhaling of release-o release-o! But the arrangement is like all over the place and it doesn't make sense. It's like too much stuff going on with the keyboards playing a different random songs and the result isn't frenetic and exciting but bewildering.

Sorry to do this here but I can't help it- this reminds me of the appeal of punk, a style of music I rarely enjoy. But the best of the punk bands were doing successfully with less what Yes is trying and failing to do here with more- raw primal energy. Harmony singing, lead guitar licks during verses, and floaty keyboards do not help achieve this.
Srsly with this goddamn keyboard- the last verse/chorus is actually pretty good, Anderson is on fire, and this irritating thin keyboard is buzzing about like a housefly around my ear.

Arriving UFO
I could not take it oh so seriously really when you went and wrote this song
*sigh*… I don't… even… I can't with this.
More horribly clunk lyric structure. YOU-OU-OU say.. etc. But now with whirly synth noises that is supposed to be, I dunno, space, or some crap.
Have I mentioned I abhor the synth/keyboard sounds on this album?

Circus of Heaven
WTF is going on here. Guys- I totally don't remember this track. There's like, no song, it's just Anderson spouting nonsense while musicians tune up.
lol the kid talking about lions- that is like supposed to be some profound moment of something. This is embarrassing to listen to.

Onward
Yes, onward please.
The opening bass melody reminds me of Watermelon In Easter Hay by Zappa.
Harmony singing is strong, and finally the "simple" lyrics are working because it's about a simple subject.

On the Silent Wings of Freedom
Chris Squire comes in to end the album on a high note.
music puns, bitches!
This track sounds like the band rehearsing and jamming. It doesn't feel like a song but there is great guitar stuff and I mercifully no longer understand what Anderson is on about and, again, BWAH BWAh goes the bass. It's a welcome relief here and a fun track.

Spotify had the fancy schmancy deluxe version so I listened to the afore-mentioned bonus tracks as well (thank you for the recommendation whoever pointed them out).
There's Picasso, which is acoustic-y and short, and, along with Madrigal, Wondrous Stories, Countryside etc, suggests a strong interest in stripped down music by Anderson and maybe others in the band. I wonder if they ever considered jettisoning the role of keyboard player in the band and actually carrying as a smaller group in the studio to make more "mature" music.

There's a ditty called High and it sounds like something off their 2nd album! It's pretty good but no they had to put freaking Circus of UFO on this thing gawdammit.

And guys you gotta check out this song called Money. It's hilarious. It's like, a boogie, and it's about money, and there's a guy talking the whole time in the background for some reason.
Reminds me that crappy Grateful Dead song about money that was pretty much like this. At least Yes left this off the album.

What else- oh the album cover has a guy murdering a large pomegranate with some chopsticks near his crotch and it's called tomato but with an r in it. So there's that.

In conclusion- man I can't believe I just wrote that many words about freaking TORMATO.

 

Great review. Your review will be much longer than mine....but mine will be just a critical.

 

Oh no, folks- jumping this deeply back into prog rock is messing with my head.
I just listened to Rick Wakeman's "6 Wives of Henry VIII" which I had always dismissed as just a keyboard solo album and I... well, I really enjoyed it. I was playing air-keyboard. Or, office desk keyboard.

Before I call a doctor, I will now attempt a Steve Howe album, perhaps that will bring me back down to reality.

 

If you listen to the first Howe album your immersion will just get worse. Put on a Bob Dylan album for a remedy.

 

I agree with most of your review, though I think 'Arriving UFO' is goofy fun. Circus of Heaven kinda worked for me in concert -I don't know how. And 'Don't Kill the Whale" is quite strong live on Yeshows, but not so great on Tormato -I credit Howe's guitar tone and attack for the vast improvement.

 

If they released one LP featuring the following from GFTO and Tormato, it would have been their peak IMO:

Side A:
Going For the One
Future Times/Rejoice
Release Release
Don't Kill the Whale

Side B:
On the Silent Wings of Freedom
Awaken

While I agree with the criticism of the lyrics to Don't Kill The Whale, I love the music, and I was already in the habit of treating Yes lyrics as aural textures rather than words, so I just kept doing so with this song.

 

Tormato stands out in my mind as one of the most puzzling abrupt collapses of any band ever. How they went directly from the confidence and quality of Going for the One to this confused mess of a record I have no idea. And unusually for Yes, you can't pin it on a changing lineup. It's the same guys, only one year later, suddenly not knowing what they're doing.

Not all the songs are bad -- the album starts (Future Times) and ends (Onward, Silent Wings) with decent songs -- but the sounds are terrible (Chris's twangy wah wah bass is almost as unpleasant as Wakeman's Birotron to my ears), there's no sense of arrangement (I don't think Howe and Wakeman were paying any attention to what the other was playing) and even for Jon, the lyrics are awful -- ironically, they're awful because they are too comprehensible.

 

Good point about it being the same lineup. That didn't happen very often with Yes. It was, what- the first two albums, then Fragile->Edge (their peak), then this, and then not again until Rabin.

Yes, this- well said, that's what I was trying to get at. It's why I can't do this:

I envy you.

By the way I've had the hilarious opening of UFO in my head since I listened to that dam thing yesterday.
"I could not take it oh-so seriously really..."
And I've been suffering/giggling since then. I wil ask my wife if I was singing it in my sleep, as I'm sure that thing affected by dreams.

We should demand hazard pay for listening to lower-tier prog.

 

But usually, the albums in those pairs were comparable in quality (though there is a certainly a dip between 90125 and Big Generator) and fairly consistent in sound. The distance between Going for the One and Tormato feels closer to the difference between, say, The Yes Album and Union. (I may be exaggerating a little, but not that much.)

I mean, I shouldn't say I have no idea why -- times were changing, they felt threatened by punk and new wave, and tried to change up what they were doing, and couldn't do it. But it feels like everything about the band just fell apart at once.

 

Oh certainly, I understood your point, I meant to agree at how remarkable it seems. Like you would think stability would help but the opposite happened.

One thing I do challenge is this idea that they were threatened by punk/new-wave- it's a thing I see come up when talking about Yes (and Genesis and even Pink Floyd). But do we know that for sure, or is that something that feels right in retrospect?

 

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest you were disagreeing.

Maybe "threatened" is too strong a word, but all of the prog and semi-prog bands either disappeared or went through the same sort of evolution at that time -- simplifying and shortening their songs -- even if they claim that they didn't really care what other bands were doing. I think there was a general sense that tastes were changing, and they were.

 

ELP bucked the trend with a side long opus on their 78 album Love Beach, though few got past the cover photo to hear the music.

 

Because f** it why not:

Alan White- Ramshackled



Ooh Baby (Goin' To Pieces)
The title- with the baby and the apostrophe- clue you in to what to expect. Soul music, honey. HUGE AIR QUOTES. It's like Hall & Oates deep cuts.
I'm not sure who's singing. It's not good but considering I just finished listening to Beginning by Steve Howe this guy sounds like Bing freaking Crosby right now.

One Way Rag
A respectable pop tune. Seriously, no joke, I would play this at a party. I think a different singer than the first track.
(I'm using Spotify, I certainly don't have CD or record album in front of me because come on)

Avakak (and some more stupid words in the title)
Instrumental- sounds kinda like the band UK, which I know a lot of people like but I find boring as heck. It's "fusion" which I generally hate because there's no swing or excitement or, you know, anything in music I actually enjoy. It's like- there's a bunch of notes that happen but no hummable melody, no exciting highs or lows. It's… there. Oh, it gets a little King Crimson Lizard That One Time When They Tried To Play Free Jazz After Jon Anderson Sang A Little For Some Reason, so there's that.

Here's why everyone should listen to this song though- Alan White, the drummer who is criticized for being less jazzy than Bruford, straight plays jazz drumming here. Of serious interest to hardcore students of Yes.

Song of Innocence
Why is that when all the Yes guys made solo albums they all appeared on each others' records.
Kind of defeats the purpose, don't it fellas?!
Anyway Anderson provides a lovely melody in the verse whilst pontification about nightingales and the like and Steve Howe does some slidy guitar stuff. Harmless.

Giddy
Same singer as first track and they are doing like BTO right now, you know, takin' care of bizniss.
It's so weird 'cause lyrics are like "come on baby let's f and drink" kinda stuff but there is synth keyboards like Yes so it can't fully commit to stoopid bloozrok music.
To be clear, I like stoopid bloozrok music, it just has to have that COCKsure confidence to work.

Silly Woman
Guys… guys… no, seriously, listen LISTEN, listen to me, please. You gotta hear this song.
It's…
are you ready for this?..
no wait… *giggle*
REGGAE
Listening to this makes me feel… racisty? It's that same feeling I get when listening to Hey Negrita by the Stones, which is a feeling I don't like that's why I'm even shocked I remember that song.
THANK YOU ALAN WHITE FOR DREDGING UP RACIST MUSICAL MEMORIES
Why yes I did make it to the end of the song- I did it for you people, my fellow Yesmaniacs, you're welcome. If Rose River Bear could spend god know how many hours doing a musical analysis doctorate worthy thesis on Awaken because we asked him to, dammit I can listen to a 3 minute reggae parody-by-accident found in 1978 record store bargain bins.

Marching Into a Bottle
A jaunty pastoral jig (saxophone or keyboards in the lead).
This is the point in the record where I understand Alan White wanted to prove to the world he's more than just a drummer, he's DIVERSE.

Everybody
And we're back in jukebox territory. It would be a jukebox in the Double Deuce:


Darkness- Pt 1-3
Eh, not worse than anything on Tormato. Got some nice guitar playing by I dunno who.
I like that there are three "parts" even though the song is 5 and a half minutes. But the first part is like a normal song, then there's a little piano ballad and this where it would have helped to have a really good singer because ew. I don't really know where part 3 begins, all the instruments kind of come back and then the album ends.

You know listening to Steve Howe and Alan White solo albums back to back reminds me how in my hardcore prog/metal/shredderfanboy days I would say things like "I don't care about singing or lyrics" and then I grew up and changed my mind. Because, good singers are better than not-good singers. It's a simple truth that any jerk on the street inherently understands that you forget about when you get into crazy fancy music and it's nice to be reminded of that sometimes.

 

You Can Be Saved (Tormato Outtake)

 

Cheech and Chong's Don't Kill the Whale parody