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.