Catalog Rundown: Yes (Part 9) - Tormato (1978)

Catalog Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Tormato (1978)

They couldn't have picked a worse album cover, could they? Splattered tomatoes have a very specific connotation in the arts, and it's not exactly complimentary. Could it be a dig at Yes' critics? It's doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the album's contents.

Common knowledge is Tormato found Yes struggling to stay relevant after the punk explosion, but I don't buy that. The critics certainly weren't on their side anymore, but they had just scored a Top 10 single and No. 1 album in the U.K. American audiences also continued to fill stadiums every time the band trekked across the pond.

The problem was more likely exhaustion. Yes had taken exactly one year off from touring since 1968, and obviously put an incredible amount of energy and attention into their studio recordings.

And so, Yes had their first flop with Tormato. While it still cracked the Top 10 in the U.K. and the U.S., it charted lower than any album since Time and a Word in the U.K. The critics hated it, and even many fans rejected it as an inferior effort.

So what exactly went wrong? For one, the songwriting. While the opening "Future Times/Rejoice" is nice and melodic, it has nowhere near the power of prior album openers such as "Going for the One" and "Yours Is No Disgrace."

And Jon Anderson, the man whose melodies once drew from English folk, American R&B and contemporary classical music, has gone completely "twee." The melodies and lyrics on "Arriving UFO" and "Circus of Heaven" are almost childlike, even if they are a little weird and convoluted in classic Anderson fashion.

Something also happened to the arrangements. On "UFO" and "Circus," Howe contents himself to playing single-note lead lines throughout. This can be quite irritating, especially since his brittle tones don't exactly mesh with Wakeman's horribly cheesy polyphonic synthesizers.

There are still some gems to be found, however. Most fans find "Don't Kill the Whale" to be the nadir of the album, but I think it's genuinely good fun, even with the embarrassing ecological message and tediously overlong outro. "Onward" is a beautiful string-enhanced ballad, penned entirely by Squire and benefiting from Anderson's best vocal performance on the album.

Even though Tormato has more individual songs in its 40 minutes than any record since Fragile, they still squeeze in a somewhat extended piece. The near-eight minute "On the Silent Wings of Freedom" closes the album with boatloads of exciting interplay between Squire and White. Still, the contributions from the rest of the band are lukewarm at best and the overall impression is closer to "formless jam" than "beautifully constructed epic."

The band supported the album with an epic 11-month tour, after which they attempted to record another album in Paris with famed Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker. Things did not go well, and Jon and Rick would leave the group before the album was completed. It could have spelled the end of the group, but Howe, Squire and White were soon to get some help from a very unlikely pair.

Catalog Rundown: Yes (Part 8) - Going for the One (1977)

Catalog Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Going for the One (1977)

Following the highly successful Relayer, Yes took a two-year hiatus to record individual solo albums and embark on a brief American tour (their first without a new album to promote). In 1976, the band decamped to Patrick Moraz's native Switzerland to cook up a new album.

This set the stage for the first of many reunions between Yes and Rick Wakeman. For whatever reason, the group figured Moraz wasn't cutting it and edged him out in favor of Wakeman, who was flown out to Montreux just before recording began.

The keyboardist later said he returned because the group was "finally writing tunes again," and to a large degree this is correct. The opening title track says it all: Alan White counts off with a "1, 2, 1-2-3-4," and the band takes off on a rollicking, if still very mutated and Yes-sounding, country-rock riff.

The track doesn't ever quite let up over its five-and-a-half minutes, with Howe and Wakeman trading frantic licks while Anderson's chanting vocal brings the song's energy levels to monumental proportions. It's still epic and it still sounds like Yes, even without bizarro time signatures or impressionistic instrumental passages.

Meanwhile, "Wonderous Stories," a No. 6 single in the UK (!), clocks in at less than four minutes and follows a conventional verse-chorus-verse-bridge song structure. Featuring Anderson's most sensitive vocals since "Time and a Word" and some beautifully tasteful lead parts by Howe and Wakeman, the song is almost perfectly arranged, clearly deserving its chart success.

Don't let an accessible single or two fool you, though. The fifteen-minute "Awaken," a fan-favorite epic and concert staple, closes the book on Yes' efforts at epic songcraft during the 1970s. It's not quite like any of the band's efforts before or since, centered around a Eastern-tinged Howe riff and strangely ominous, choral-sounding vocals. The meditative church organ-and-harp middle section proves the band were still eager to try something radically different, even if it causes my attention to drift partway through.

Of course, it's not a perfect album -- "Parallels," a more accessible rock-and-roll song, doesn't quite live up to the standards set by the title track. Additionally, the bright, reverb-heavy production comes off as rather smudgy and indistinct compared to the sharp recordings of Yes' past.

The album itself peaked at No. 1 on the British albums chart and No. 8 on the U.S. chart. The ensuing tour was massively successful, with many Yes fans maintaining to this day it was the band's best-ever string of performances. Unfortunately, after more than 10 years of nonstop touring the band members were growing increasingly tired. This exhaustion would be more than apparent by the time of their next studio album.

Random Record Review: Pentagram - First Daze Here (2001)

Pentagram - First Daze Here (2001; recorded 1972-1976)
If there was any justice in the world, Maryland-based doom rockers Pentagram would have put out at least one killer, well-produced hard rock album in the 1970's. Unfortunately, personnel issues, drug addiction and plain bad luck meant a record contract would forever elude them, spelling the group's demise in 1976.

Luckily, the band recorded a handful of singles and studio demos during its short existence. In 2001, Relapse Records used these hard-to-find recordings as the basis for the 2001 compilation, First Daze Here: The Vintage Collection, turning a new generation of metalheads on to the occult-infused heaviness of this pioneering outfit.

"Forever My Queen" is the perfect album opener, laying out the band's uncompromising agenda in less than two and a half minutes with a swinging drumbeat, an utterly massive riff and Bobby Liebling's eerie vocal. Guitarist Vincent McAllister makes a breathtaking first impression with his flailing, almost out-of-control speed-guitar breaks, and bassist Greg Mayne adds even more weight to the repetitive main riff with a chordal bassline.

The rest of the album follows suit, benefiting greatly from Liebling's unconventional songwriting and McAllister's white-hot guitar theatrics. But Pentagram is no one-trick pony -- "Review Your Choices" finds the group in a slow-and-moody Sabbath groove that positively oozes menace, while "Hurricane" and "Earth Flight" find the group ratcheting up the tempo and energy levels to near-Sir Lord Baltimore levels.

Perhaps the climax of the record is the six-minute "Last Days Here," an echoey warehouse recording in which a positively haunted-sounding Liebling pleads for salvation from hopelessness and despair. The second half of the song is an ever-building repetition of the main chord progression in which Liebling growing more harrowingly desperate through the song's cathartic ending. A true epic, and chock-full of genuine emotional resonance.

First Daze Here is proof that one of the best stories in rock never got a chance to happen. These recordings stand as a milestone in the untold history of heavy metal and are essential listening for those who like to dabble on the dark side of hard rock.

Postscript: Perhaps the only flaw with this compilation is the sequencing: these tracks come from various recording sessions and studios, so the sound quality may abruptly change from one song to the next. This could have been mitigated by grouping songs from the same session together in sequence. But this is a minor quibble -- frankly, we're lucky these recordings even still exist.

FEATURE: Five Classic Hard Rock Albums You Never Knew Existed

So I thought I'd take a little break from all the Yes reviews this week to give you something a little different. Everyone knows the heavy hitters of early-1970's hard rock: Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep are all prime examples of bands that pioneered heavy metal during the genre's infancy. But they weren't the only ones trading on the potent, blues-based weightiness of the era. Countless bands embraced the proto-metal aesthetic, providing record collectors and riff hounds with a seemingly endless supply of unique, creative and bone-crushingly heavy music from pretty much every country that had a recording industry in the early '70s.

So put on your hard hat, light your incense and dust off your air guitar: Here are five of the best little-known, early-'70s heavy gems from around the world:

1. Sir Lord Baltimore – Kingdom Come (1970, Mercury)



This Brooklyn-based outfit holds the distinction of being the first act to be described as “heavy metal” in print. The group's debut album, “Kingdom Come,” is like a ball of energy from start to finish. The band's razor-sharp fuzz riffs, frequently played in a piercing middle-to-upper register for maximum guitar-face, compliment drummer/vocalist John Garner's frantic tempos and over-the-top vocals. Unfortunately, the group would call it a day after only one more self-titled album.

2. Captain Beyond – Captain Beyond (1972, Capricon)



Something of a supergroup, Captain Beyond brought together former members of Iron Butterfly and Deep Purple for a three-album run between 1972 and 1977. Their self-titled debut is the best of these, mixing creative riffs, crazy time changes, soulful vocals and utterly schizophrenic drumming together for an almost overwhelmingly exciting musical gumbo. Unlike many records of the era, no song goes over 4 minutes and no solo overstays its welcome, even as each song crams in about a million and a half riffs. The whole thing is topped off with a hilariously nonsensical concept about expanding your mind and how the moon speaks to the sea. How can you resist?

3. Buffalo – Volcanic Rock



While bands like Captain Beyond obviously cared about the art of what they were doing, Australia's Buffalo made no bones about what they were up to: primitive, druggy riff-metal that slogs it out in a confrontational and decidedly non-commercial manner. The guitars sound like vacuum cleaners, vocalist Dave Tice sounds like he could have played King Leonidas in Frank Miller's “300” and half of the songs sound like the band was on Quaaludes when they were recorded. Unfortunately, Buffalo only put out one more classic album (“Buffalo Only Want You For Your Body”) before settling into a more mainstream hard rock sound that lasted until their 1977 breakup.

4. Flower Travellin' Band – Satori (1971, Atlantic)



Proving the West by no means had the heavy rock market cornered in the early '70s, Japan's Flower Travellin' Band released two albums of popular Western rock covers before recording their first LP of entirely original music in 1971. Despite the band's reputation as a covers act, Satori is one of the most original records of the era, fusing psychedelic, progressive and heavy rock in a manner that has so far defied all critical attempts at pigeonholing.

Satori is no commercial exercise – the whole album is comprised of one five-part, experimental composition, mostly set in a dark and foreboding mood in the Black Sabbath tradition but clearly transcending that band's influence. There are so many twists and surprises it would be unfair to divulge more, but safe to say there is nothing else like Satori – it's an incredible journey for the more adventurous headbanger.

5. Bang – Bang! (1971, Capitol)



Philly-based hard rockers Bang were clearly influenced by Black Sabbath, with guitarist Frank Glicken carefully emulating Tony Iommi's steamroller guitar tone and vocalist Frank Ferrara giving us his best wailing Ozzy impression. But this isn't quite a clone band: whereas Sabbath's focus was almost exclusively doom and gloom, Bang add elements of Beatlesesque pop to their ultra-sludgy riffs, producing a somewhat peculiar but undoubtedly original and exciting sound. That doesn't mean there isn't plenty of room for good, old-fashioned metal: “The Queen” has a nice and gloomy riff, and “Future Shock” is nothing more than pure doom metal about 15 years before the fact.

There you have it. Of course, these albums are just the beginning. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bands popped up in the early '70s playing this kind of music, and collectors are still discovering new unheard-of gems, oftentimes faster than reissue labels can keep up with them. Part of what makes this hobby so exciting is the thought that somewhere in someone's basement lies a tape or private vinyl run of some never-heard, ultra-heavy proto-metal band that never made it. Somehow, we never tire of this music recorded four decades ago, a testament to the creative energy and sheer quality of the early 1970s music scene.

Catalog Rundown: Yes (Part 7) - Yesterdays (1975)

Catalog Rundown (formerly Artist Rundown) is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Yesterdays (1975)

This strange compilation was released in 1975, presumably to fill the market gap during Yes' 1975-1976 hiatus. The record features six tracks from the group's first two albums, a Peter Banks-era B-side and a 10-minute Simon and Garfunkel cover originally released on an obscure Atlantic Records compilation.

The selection of material is a little unbalanced, with only two tracks taken from the band's self-titled debut and a whopping four from Time and a Word. There isn't a dud among the tracks, of course, but they hold little interest for fans who undoubtedly already have the first two records in their entirety.

There's a different reason fans need this in their LP collection -- the aforementioned cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "America." Recorded around the time of Fragile, this is the only track on the record to feature Rick Wakeman or Steve Howe, and it stands favorably next to the rest of the band's output from this time period.

While S&G's original had a tender, slightly jazzy folk treatment, Yes blow the song up to ridiculous, orchestral proportions. Try to imagine a folk classic stretched out to 10 minutes with all the Yes trappings: long instrumental sections, tempo and mood changes, quotes from West Side Story's "America," a totally milked chorus and an air guitar-worthy rockabilly hoedown courtesy of Howe. Of course, fans of the original will find this downright sacrilegious, but it's hard to imagine the band realized how profane their de(re?)construction of the song ended up sounding. I'd imagine they'd respond to such criticisms with something to the effect of "It's all music, man." It would be typically Yes, and wouldn't it be just a little bit correct?

The other essential track, "Dear Father," is a beautiful Andersonian pop song from the Time and a Word sessions. While the track is especially noteworthy for fans of the Banks era, the lush orchestral arrangement robs the song of some of its power, and superior versions are found both on Yes' BBC sessions collection and the 2003 remaster of Yes.

Postscript: Both "America" and "Dear Father" were reissued on CD during Rhino's 2003 Yes remastering campaign. The former appeared on Fragile and the latter appeared on Time and a Word, both as bonus tracks. In addition, "America" appeared in both remixed and original form on Steven Wilson's 5.1 release of Close to the Edge in 2013. This compilation is still of value, however, to those who prefer vinyl or earlier, non-remastered CD pressings.

Catalog Rundown: Yes (Part 6) - Relayer (1974)

Catalog Rundown (formerly Artist Rundown) is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Relayer (1974)

While Tales from Topographic Oceans was a huge commercial success, its epic length and abstract concept left many confounded, including keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Dissatisfied with the direction of the band (and reportedly insufferable to the rest of the members on the ensuing tour), Wakeman left in the spring of 1974.

Enter Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz, a prodigious talent whose previous ventures included post-The Nice outfit Refugee. While Moraz was every bit as classically trained as Wakeman, he had a distinct taste for the emerging jazz-fusion scene, bringing a fresh perspective to the band's keyboard sound.

Meanwhile, the instrumental capabilities of Howe, Squire and White were reaching almost frightening proportions. As a result, Relayer, the Moraz lineup's sole effort, stands as the most complex and instrumentally ferocious album in the band's catalog.

Reprising the format of Close to the Edge, Relayer features one sidelong piece backed by two nine-minute "mini-epics". At first this may seem like a retrograde step, but the actual music couldn't be more different. In fact, Moraz's jazz-fusion leanings, coupled with Yes' newfound interest in chaos and dissonance, make this album the biggest departure from the traditional Yes sound yet attempted.

The opening "Gates of Delirium," a 22-minute epic inspired by Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace," is more or less divided into three thematic parts: the propaganda-filled wind-up to war, a musical representation of the chaos and violence of battle, and a soothing "post-war" finale in which Anderson yearns for peace like an angel descending on a war-torn battlefield.

The middle section of "Gates" is perhaps the most maniacal concoction in Yes' discography. Time signatures shift, extra beats are thrown in where they don't belong and dissonant guitar and keyboard passages burst forth when they're least expected. Add in some maddening musique concrete-type effects, the sounds of clashing metal and Howe's machine gun-like Telecaster and you've got one hell of a battlefield scene.

"Sound Chaser" kicks off Side B with a similarly dissonant approach. It's not total chaos -- the opening vocal section is melodic enough, only there are, uh, a ton of melodies going on at once. The guitar takes center stage about midway through, ripping through an unaccompanied, rockabilly-infused solo that somehow morphs into an almost "electric classical" motif before you're even aware what's happened. Squire and White follow this by locking into a manic sixteenth-note groove that continually speeds up and slows down in a merciless roller-coaster ride of shifting rhythms.

Finally, there's "To Be Over," a gorgeous ballad that opens with some of Steve Howe's most sensitive and life-affirming melodies yet. The following three-part vocal harmonies are positively relaxing, and not just in the context of this particularly aggressive album. Of course, the band just can't help but mess with the song structure, and soon enough we are presented with a series of brief, distinct sections that change so quickly it's easy to lose track if you're not paying close attention. It's somewhat jarring, but your patience is rewarded when the whole thing finishes with a sparklingly beautiful wordless chorale that launches the band well into the stratosphere.

The album was another success, peaking at No. 4 and No. 5 in the U.K. and U.S. respectively. The ensuing tour was massively successful, breaking stadium attendance records in several American cities. The group had a hard time producing ideas for a follow-up album and instead spent the better part of 1975 preparing individual solo albums, setting out on another Relayer-based tour in 1976. Of course, the story of Yes is a long and strange one, and some familiar faces were to return to the fold before the end of the '70s.

Postscript: It should be noted that for this album Howe swapped his Gibson jazz guitars for a Fender Telecaster, a guitar known for its bright and cutting tone. This heavily contributes to the album's overall aggressive posture.

Unfortunately, neither "Sound Chaser" or "To Be Over" have been played live since 1976, despite many pleas from fans. "The Gates of Delirium" was briefly resurrected in 2000 and 2001 but has not been revisited since.

Artist Rundown: Yes (Part 5) - Tales from Topographic Oceans

Artist Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973)

I guess I always knew it would come down to this. The one that separates the men from the boys. The one that sends punk rockers fleeing in terror to their copies of Never Mind the Bollocks. The one that divided critics and fans alike. Ladies and gentlemen ... Tales from Topographic Oceans.

In 1973, public interest in Yes was at an all-time high, thanks in large part to the smash success of Close to the Edge. There was a slight problem, though: it was hard to see where else the band could go after the vast expanse of CTTE.

Anderson had already been toying with the idea of basing an album on a footnote in Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi" when a snarky music critic suggested Yes follow CTTE by putting the Bible to music. Anderson took this as a challenge, and devised a concept in which each side of the new album would relate to one of the four categories of Shastric scriptures.

And thus, Tales was born. Two LPs. Four songs averaging 20 minutes each. God, Indian mysticism and Univeralism. Have fun, kiddies.

The first thing you notice when you put on side one, "The Revealing Science of God: The Dance of the Dawn," is how mellow everything sounds. Whereas "Edge" started with a rush of manic energy and aggression, "Revealing" starts with ... pastoral chanting. Yes, it's quite bizarre -- a one-note, lyric-packed melody that gradually builds in intensity before settling down to a nice, laid-back groove. It's very pretty -- even beautiful -- and chock full of inventive guitar work, but there's something oddly folky and definitely stoned about this Topographic business, and the murky production just ups the weird ante even further.

By this point it becomes clear the group's approach to the epic-length song has changed, probably due to the fact that they had to come up with four of them. "Close to the Edge" was lengthy, but it had a very coherent structure. Tales' epics are more random, gliding from one section to another, introducing many different passages and riffs in a manner that comes off as rather linear until they reprise a previous section at a key moment. This would be aggravating if the band didn't do it so well -- careful attention clearly went into writing and arranging every passage, and the transitions never sound too out-of-place.

Side two consists of "The Remembering: High the Memory," an even more mellow track with a beautifully dreamy melody and some nice baroque refrains. The track is even more abstract than the first -- there is a section featuring washes of atmospheric sound and sonorous synthesizer leads that recurs throughout to great effect. The liner notes say this is a musical representation of the "Topographic Ocean," and I must say the band's attempt is impressively evocative.

"The Ancient: The Giants Under the Sun" kicks off side three with a quirky percussion-driven section (borrowed from Rick Wakeman's Six Wives of Henry VIII) before introducing an appropriately mastodonic musical portrayal of the song's subject matter. Twelve minutes in, the track takes a detour into a gorgeous classical guitar/vocal duet before crashing back down on the main "Giants" theme. It is interesting indeed to hear Yes working in such experimental parameters -- it ain't King Crimson, but it'll flip your weird-wig just fine.

The closing "Ritual (Nous Sommes du Soleil)," has a more traditional Yes-epic song structure. This is the one where it all comes together -- the band finally gives us some old-fashioned, up-tempo, major-key Yessism, replete with those busy Squire basslines the album seemed to be missing up to this point. The core "song" is a beautiful, classic Jon melody that erupts into a kick-ass jam halfway through, complete with heart-pumping bass and guitar solos and a weird, jarring percussion-driven section meant to portray "the ritual of life." The song closes with a gorgeously sensitive vocal part from Jon -- perhaps his best moment on the album -- and an incredibly menacing and climactic guitar solo by Howe.

So, overall, very good, if not perfect. You do have to kind of let down your defenses to get the full cathartic effect of this stuff, especially when the cringy religious lyrics start in the latter third of "Revealing" ("Glory to sons of all righteous paths" -- yikes). But it is impressive indeed that the band could keep up the originality over nearly 80 minutes of music, much less conjure some moments of true resonance that stand alongside the best of the band's output. You have to be in the right mood, for sure, but when it strikes you, Tales hits the spot perfectly.

Postscript: The 2003 Rhino remaster tacks a couple of extra minutes onto the beginning of "The Revealing Science of God" that were excised just before the album's release due to length concerns (IMO, this an improvement -- I always thought the start on that one was too abrupt anyway). This release also has studio run-throughs of "Revealing" and "The Ancient" that are worth a listen for fans of the album.

Artist Rundown: Yes (Part 6)

Artist Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Yessongs (1973)

Oh boy. How could an album like this not reach classic status among the Yes faithful? Spanning an unheard-of-at-the-time three LPs, Yessongs culls together every song played on the Fragile and Close to the Edge tours, most of which mop the floor with their studio counterparts in terms of sheer energy. The record also features several extended or alternate arrangements of well-known favorites and supremely entertaining solo spots from Howe, Squire and Wakeman.

So why have I never felt the same special connection with Yessongs as I do the other Yes records of the era? Well, the production. It is truly atrocious. The material from the CttE tour in particular sounds distorted, muddy and over-reverbed. It would almost be tolerable if it weren't for the mix -- whisper quiet bass, screamingly loud guitar, almost inaudible keyboards that lurch forward for certain sections ... and that's just the first song.

Anyway, a little historical context: After the release of Close to the Edge, Bill Bruford shocked everyone by leaving the now very successful Yes for the decidedly un-commercial King Crimson. It proved to be the right move, allowing the band to bring in a drummer who was perhaps more in line with the music that was to come. In-demand London session player Alan White, whose references included names such as John Lennon, George Harrison and Ginger Baker, had three days to learn the group's epic setlist before the start of the tour promoting Close to the Edge.

The bulk of the recordings on this album come from this time, and it is impressive how quickly White adapted to the band's notoriously tricky arrangements. Being a more straight-ahead rock drummer, he tended to "slug it out" where Bruford would dexterously dance around the beat. While some aspects of this can be irritating -- particularly White's tendency to constantly bang on a ride cymbal or open hi-hat -- there's no denying he pushed the group to be more aggressive and "ballsier" than ever, with Steve Howe in particular cranking the distortion on his guitar even higher than before.

The three tracks from the Fragile tour, with Bruford on drums, boast some of the interesting deviations from the studio versions found on the record. While the double-riff section of "Perpetual Change" is executed more or less as on the LP, the band unexpectedly follows it with a guitar-led jam section and drum solo. "Long Distance Runaround" proceeds as on the album before launching into an epic, multipart version of "The Fish" that more than triples the length of the LP version -- it could be the most musically fascinating section of Yessongs.

That's not to say the band doesn't stretch out on the White recordings. Yours Is No Disgrace is a true extravaganza: Just where Howe's mid-song fuzz solo is supposed to end, the guitarist lets forth nearly two minutes of almost unaccompanied, fleet-fingered guitar leads. The band then launches into a massive, heretofore unheard ensemble riff that carries Howe all the way back to Anderson's plaintive vocal. Hot damn. The group would use this arrangement on stage for another 40 years.

As you can probably tell by my above review, my feelings regarding the album have warmed considerably over the years. Yes, the recording quality is abysmal. Yes, the group wouldn't reach its full live potential (in my opinion) until the Relayer era. But this is the sound of a band in the midst of its most fertile and creative period, performing its best-loved work while it was still relatively fresh. There will probably never be anything like Yessongs again, and to this day there's nothing quite like sitting down with the original triple-LP set for two full hours of mind-blowing musicianship and epic songcraft.

Stick around, Yessongs, warts and all.

Random Record Review: Soft Mountain - Soft Mountain (2007)

Soft Mountain - Soft Mountain (2007; recorded 2003)

In 2003, former members of British jazz-rock legends Soft Machine came together under the name Soft Works for a one-off album and tour. That August, while touring Japan, bassist Hugh Hopper and saxophonist Elton Dean took a day to jam with two of Japan's most creative musical personalities, composer/keyboardist Hoppy Kamiyama and drummer Yoshida Tatsuya. These completely improvised sesssions were finally released in 2007 under the name Soft Mountain.

Consisting of two lengthy, exploratory "suites" -- one clocking in at 30 minutes, the other at 27 -- Soft Mountain is an intelligent, challenging journey that never fails to stimulate. This music is Free with a capital "F," with zero composed reference points and a lineup that has never played together before learning how to push each other's buttons in real-time.

The first thing one notices as the disc begins is Tatsuya's immacuately produced drumming. Wreathed in a roomy, ambient acoustic environment, his kit sounds absolutely massive, and his insistent, constantly-changing whirlwind of fills and rhythms comes off as more force of nature than human musician. This encourages the rest of the quartet to push the envelope, taking a decidedly "heavy," rock-influenced approach as they move through the record's various grooves, moods and directions.

Like most free jazz, the emphasis here is not on individual solos but the ability of the band to spontaneously create something interesting in a group context. While there is plenty of free jazz-like dissonance on display, the group always manages to slink into a solid, riff- or groove-based idea -- usually based on one of Hopper's monster basslines -- before going completely off the rails.

There are also some surprisingly sensitive moments. Less than 20 minutes into Part II, the rhythm section slowly retreats, leaving Kamiyama and Dean to a gorgeous sax-piano duet in which Kamiyama seems to channel mid-'70s Keith Jarrett. This serves as a transition to the furious climax of Soft Mountain, a major-key fusion romp that is perhaps the record's most accessible moment.

Of course, music like this isn't for everybody. But for fans of early-'70s Soft Machine's free-jazz/rock stylings, this should be a no-brainer, and anyone looking for the missing link between rock music and free jazz will have their minds suitably blown. The fact that half of the musicians were well into maturity at the time of recording makes the record's aggression and energy even more incredible. A solid, worthwhile effort.

Artist Rundown: Yes (Part 5)

Artist Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Close to the Edge (1972)

After the one-two punch of The Yes Album and Fragile, it seemed like Yes could do no wrong. The band was quickly reaching its critical and commercial apex, and expectations were high for a fifth album.

Yes proved to be up to the challenge, constructing what many fans to be its creative peak: Close to the Edge.

The album consists of only three songs: one 18-minute title track backed by two 10-minute "mini epics." Songs as long as 20 minutes were not unheard of at the time, but where groups like Emerson, Lake and Palmer composed "suites" of individual-but-interconnected song fragments, Yes wanted to write a Song with a capital "S" -- logical development, melodic continuity and coherent structure were not going to be sacrificed in the name of length.

Yes, "Close to the Edge" is truly a masterwork. The opening alone was enough to hook me: The sound of birds and a bubbling brook suddenly give way to an ominously ascending ensemble riff before transforming into a dense, head-spinning melee of notes and rhythms. Then, without warning, all the instruments stop, and a single chord of harmony vocals bursts through. Just as quickly, the dense jamming returns, even more ferocious than before. And that's just the first two minutes.

As mind-blowing as "CttE" is, the crowning achievement of the album is side B's opener, "And You And I," often a candidate among fans for the best Yes song ever. Everything about it, from the beautifully sad 12-string guitar in the intro to the various tension-release sections, oozes personality and emotion. The first mid-song climax bellows with power, with soaring orchestral mellotron and synth sounds providing the basis for Anderson's beatific vocal. Just when you think it's over, the 12-string intro returns to transition us into something a bit more rock-based but no less trivial before the cataclysmic finale.

That leaves the closing "Siberian Khatru," a slightly more straight-ahead rock tune and guitar showcase that would become a staple curtain-raiser at Yesshows for decades to come. The herky-jerky riff sounds great with the spacious vocal harmonies on top, and the contrasting moods of the shifting vocal refrain sound like they shouldn't work but somehow do. My favorite part of the song is the berserk harpsichord solo, which can only be described as "hilarious" -- and I mean that as a compliment!

Of course, the record was a smash success, reaching Number 3 in the US and Number 4 in the UK (imagine an album with an 18-minute symphonic rock song doing that today). After the album was released, Bill Bruford left the band to join King Crimson, a move shocked everyone considering KC's decidedly "un-commercial" disposition and Yes' success at the time. Of course, this did nothing to quash the ever-expanding ambitions of Anderson and Co. ....

Artist Rundown: Yes (Part 4)

Artist Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Fragile (1971)

It's hard to believe that in the span of one year Yes released not one, but two critically acclaimed classic albums. Certainly the group was riding the crest of a creative wave, one that would last, according to most fans and critics, for the better part of the next six years.

While The Yes Album had been the band's breakout success, something was needed to make the picture complete. Enter classically trained keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who replaced Tony Kaye at the conclusion of The Yes Album tour. Wakeman brought to the band a more demonstrative and tonally diverse approach to the keyboards, as well as a solid foundation in musical theory that gave the band's compositional chops a major boost.

Here, the group builds on the "great leap forward" of the last album, expanding their vocabulary with increasingly complex arrangements and song structures. The opener, the up-tempo "Roundabout," was a smash hit on American FM radio, helping propel the LP to the No. 4 spot on the Billboard albums chart. Imagine a song with all those tempo changes, dizzying breaks and complex instrumental parts breaking through the mainstream today ...

Overall, the production is magnificent -- a multi-layered wonderworld that must have floored early-70's audiences. This is best exemplified by "South Side of the Sky," whose ghostly, wordless harmonies and ominous piano breaks tread ground that Yes would seldom touch on in the future. "Heart of the Sunrise" also goes down a storm, serving as the best execution of Yes' symphonic tension-release ambitions up to this point.

About a quarter of the album is dedicated to five short solo pieces, each demonstrating the individual skills of the band. Squire and Howe's are probably the most iconic, the former a rollicking jam comprised almost entirely of overdubbed basses playing in various registers and the latter being a beautiful solo classical guitar piece. Wakeman's Moog-enhanced treatment of Brahms' Symphony No. 4 is probably the least exciting of the bunch, but at least it only clocks in at 1:38.

The less die-hard consider this to be Yes' best effort, and I can certainly sympathize with their case. I still give the nod to Close to the Edge as the band's finest achievement, and even prefer the more straight ahead approach of The Yes Album. Nonetheless, this stands in the Top 5 of Yes' greatest achievements and is an album no serious rock collection should go without.

Artist Rundown: Yes (Part 3)

Artist Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - The Yes Album (1971)

While Peter Banks laid the framework for what a Yes guitarist should more or less sound like, it took the flashy, twelve-fingered fretwork of rock/jazz/country virtuoso Steve Howe to finally propel the band to stardom. Yes, it's clear that his presence has upped the stakes for all involved -- the band's songwriting and arrangements are tighter, more focused and more well-formed than ever, even as the song lengths continue to expand.

The nine-minute opener "Yours Is No Disgrace" could be in the running for greatest Yes song ever, starting with an immensely catchy stop-start riff that leads into a galloping rhythm over which Howe lays his trademark licks. The whole band shares vocal duties in a rather CSNY-inspired manner for the first section before Howe takes the reins with a fabulous stereo-panned guitar riff, giving way to some of the most exhilarating guitar-based band interplay ever committed to tape.

If "Yours" is more a musical journey than a traditional "song," "Starship Trooper" is perhaps a warmer and more relateable take on Yes' cosmic message. It starts off with a pastoral -- yet no less astral-sounding -- melodic section before launching into a repetitive, monolithic groove that builds and builds the tension before crashing down on an absolutely breathtaking rock guitar crescendo from Mr. Howe. Who said progressive rock lacks emotional power?

For their troubles, the band received a peak spot of No. 4 on the British albums chart (and the somewhat less impressive No. 40 peak spot on the U.S. Billboard albums chart). This was largely due to the group's breakout hit, the two-part "Your Move/I've Seen All Good People." The song is a major accomplishment indeed, fusing a beautiful, folky melody with a rollicking climax and a hook that seemingly doesn't know when to stop.

The crowning achievement of the record, at least from a technical perspective, is the final piece, "Perpetual Change." Here the band combine their customarily beautiful melodicism with their most complex instrumentation to date, culminating in the dizzying middle section in which two complex riffs are played against each other in each stereo channel.

So, the band's skill finally matches its ambition, and with energy to spare. What to do next?

Artist Rundown: Yes (Part 2)

Artist Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Time and a Word (1970)

The music is more or less in the same direction as the debut, only with a little more sprawl, a full orchestra on every song and preachy, hip-at-the-time "love is all you need" lyrics. Of course, this datedness would render any objective critical assessment unduly harsh, so good thing I love Squire's increasingly aggressive bass and Anderson's earnest vocals to pieces.

From the beginning it is clear the group is trying to up the instrumental ante, with the opening Richie Havens cover "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed" centering itself around a catchy, muscular bassline that seems to just keep going and going. "Everydays," a song written by Stephen Stills and originally performed by The Byrds, starts out airy and mysterious before giving way to a thrashing middle section that combines punk-like speed and aggression with Banks' usual jazz-rock guitar heroics.

Also of note is the beautiful title track, which borrows just a little bit from "All You Need Is Love" but still manages to overcome its inherent schmaltziness thanks to Anderson's sincere, unaffected vocal. Elsewhere, "Sweet Dreams" is a wonderfully catchy single-length tune that manages to convey a feeling of optimism without coming off as too overbearing. I even groove on "Clear Days," a much-maligned track with Anderson crooning about everybody being together forever or somesuch over a syrupy string section and piano.

This would be the last attempt by Yes to record an album with a symphony orchestra until 2001's Magnification, and it's not hard to see why. The orchestra adds some nice color to the proceedings, but it is not used in a particularly imaginative way, save for some impressive atmospheric flourishes on "Everydays." I guess they didn't too much like the results, either -- the idea left Banks so pissed off he left the group for good shortly after the album's release.

Postscript: Hilariously, the American edition of this album features his replacement Steve Howe in the group photo on the cover.

Artist Rundown: Yes (Part 1)

Artist Rundown is a periodic feature in which I briefly share my thoughts, memories and opinions of an artist or group's entire recorded work in chronological order. First up is one of the bands which helped developed my love of and taste in music: progressive rock legends Yes.

Yes - Yes (1969)

When I first read about this album, it was described as light, jazzy 60's pop. While those influences are definitely apparent, it's clear by the end of the the first track that, even this early, these guys had a rough blueprint of the basic Yes sound. Chris Squire's trebly, distorted Rickenbacker bass sound is already fully developed and pleasingly loud in the mix, and he and drummer Bill Bruford lock horns throughout the record to incredible effect. Meanwhile, the woefully underrated Peter Banks (R.I.P.) lays down all manner of jazzy, major-key lead lines that prove he pioneered the Yes guitar sound two years before his replacement by Steve Howe.

The group's propensity toward clever arrangements is already evident in the jammed-out, quasi-symphonic treatment of The Beatles' "Every Little Thing" and the closing micro-epic "Survival." Also of note is singer Jon Anderson's songwriting, which is surprisingly warm and tender given the abstract approach he would take to lyric writing for the better part of the '70s. "Yesterday and Today" and "Sweetness" are both gorgeous, gentle love ballads without a trace of the sentimentality that would plague Anderson's later attempts in this area.

Postscript: The 2003 expanded edition includes several essential bonus tracks, including a rare single version of "Everydays" and an epic, seven-minute B-side called "Something's Coming" that just about blew me away when I first heard it (yes, that's "Something's Coming," as in West Side Story -- just give it a listen).

Random Record Review: SBB - Karlstad Live (2001)

SBB - Karlstadt Live (2001; recorded 1975)
This is a fantastic live album by a band I don't much care for. Yes, on paper, Polish '70s progressive rockers SBB sound like the kind of guys I'd get along with: top-notch musicianship, extended improvisation and innumerable live archive releases in which no song is played the same way twice. But they never quite held my interest, focusing too much on meandering keyboard and vocal parts while never quite matching the ambition of their more intricate instrumental passages.

A recording from SBB's first tour of Scandinavia in 1975, this album finds the group in a state of apparent transition, carving a space somewhere between the rough, blues-influenced hard rock of the early '70s and the kind of menacing jazz-rock jams favored on the band's contemporaneous albums. Guitarist Apostolis Anthimos' McLaughlin-esque guitar flourishes are now pushed to the forefront, and the music is all the better for it. When his rapid clusters of fuzzed-up phrases spray over the the slow boil of the band's ominous two-chord vamps, the effect is nothing less than intoxicating. Even bandleader Jozef Skrzek's vocals are an improvement, coming off as much rougher and blusier than in the studio. Indeed, one could argue at this point the band was the closest you'd ever get to a Zeppelin-Mahavishu hybrid.

This approach is best exemplified by the first two tracks, "Pretty Face" and "Born to Die," not coincidentally the best 20-minute stretch of the album. But perhaps the most unusual track is "Clouds," a non-trivial four-and-a-half-minute atmospheric piece in which Skrzek's electric piano and organ slowly build a fantastic level of tension before launching into another heavy guitar showcase, the all-instrumental "Stormy Bay." "Wonderful Sky-Ride" is closer to the style of the first two tracks, only more overtly minor-key and with a few tape faults revealing the off-air origins of this broadcast recording.

Unfortunately, the album is not without its missteps, namely the closing "Return to the South." Despite the blues-portending title, the track is more stylistically typical of the band's approach to jamming at the time -- an uninteresting/repetitive drum beat, no riff to speak of and lots of monotonous guitar and synth soloing. All for nine minutes. Enjoy.

As keyboardist/vocalist Jozef Skrzek says in the opening moments of this recording, the music performed at this concert was made "only for today" and would never be repeated. Unfortunately, this meant the group would soon abandon this heavier approach for the epic, sprawling prog of Pamięć and Ze Słowem Biegnę Do Ciebie. But given the ever-changing nature of SBB, it seems appropriate that the only night where they got it exactly right would ultimately be just a footnote in the long career of a band that never seemed content to settle into comfortable repetition.