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.
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