Another decade, another box set for prog-rock giants Yes.<\/p>\n
The obvious question for any Yes fan — and I’m going to operate
\nunder the assumption here that anyone who isn’t a Yes fan isn’t
\ngoing to bother reading a review of a five-disc, $50 box set — is
\nhow this new set compares with the band’s 1991 four-disc
\ncollection,
\nYesYears<\/i>. Is it worth owning both, or will one or the other
\ndo on its own? The answer, as with so many things connected with
\nthis famously hard-to-pin-down outfit, is less than clear.<\/p>\n
An immediate point of interest, though, is the fact that the
\n1991 collection was issued with the participation of both the
\n“Classic Yes” and the Trevor-Rabin-led YesWest factions, whereas
\nthis set was compiled under the auspices of the current Classic Yes
\nlineup. In other words, if you’re looking for more unreleased
\nRabin-era tracks, don’t look here. What you will find is a number
\nof variations from
\nYesYears<\/i> — notably the absence of any of the bonus tracks
\nfrom the earlier collection — and a small sprinkling of additional
\nunreleased material, all of it from one variation or another of the
\n“classic” lineup.<\/p>\n
As on
\nYesYears<\/i>, the band is generous in terms of material from
\ntheir first two somewhat obscure albums, including eight songs and
\n42 minutes of music on disc one. It’s interesting stuff, if kind of
\ngawky in places, a musically adolescent band trying to grow into
\nthe prog-rock adult it would become. Still, it seems excessively
\ngenerous when you come upon the harder choices ahead.<\/p>\n
None of those hard choices are made when it comes to 1971’s
\nThe Yes Album<\/i>; five of its six tracks can be found here,
\nincluding all three that previously appeared on
\nYesYears<\/i>, plus guitarist Steve Howe’s solo piece “Clap.”
\n(Howe was apparently the most active participant from the band in
\nthe assembly of this set… draw your own conclusions.) Better
\nchoices are made when it comes to the band’s breakthrough
\nFragile<\/i>; this set trades in bassist Chris Squire’s “The
\nFish” for the underappreciated gem “South Side Of The Sky.” (But
\nwhy include “America” again? This makes three different albums
\nwhere this former non-album single release has been made available
\nto fans, and guess what? It’s not that great\u2026!)<\/p>\n
\nClose To The Edge<\/i> always presents problems; it’s a classic
\nalbum whose three tracks all deserve to be here.
\nYesYears<\/i> featured only the title track;
\nIn A Word<\/i> adds “Siberian Khatru.” You want to say this is a
\ngame of “You can’t win,” though, when you consider the missing “And
\nYou And I” is almost universally loved among Yesfans and its studio
\nversion is missing from both collections. Sigh.<\/p>\n
The choices from
\nTales From Topographic Oceans<\/i> and
\nRelayer<\/i> are good ones, trading “Ritual” from
\nYesYears<\/i> for the next-best suite from
\nTFTO<\/i>, “The Revealing Science Of God,” and this time
\nincluding the full “Gates Of Delirium,” one of the band’s most
\ndynamic long-form pieces. The choices from
\nGoing For The One<\/i> are equally sensible — you have to have
\nthe title track, “Wonderous Stories” was a minor hit, and “Turn Of
\nThe Century” deserves to be included on one of the two collections.
\nIt seems odd, though, to drop “Awaken” (another fan favorite, and
\nsinger Jon Anderson’s self-professed favorite Yes track), and to
\nexclude “Parallels,” which the band used to open concerts with
\nregularly in 1977-78, from both sets. Tough choices, indeed.<\/p>\n
\nTormato<\/i> is where things get a bit weird. Sure, add “Release,
\nRelease” in place of
\nYesYears<\/i>‘ “On The Silent Wings of Freedom,” that makes
\nsense. But “Arriving UFO”? Who
\nlikes<\/i> this song? And then there’s the fan-bait, the
\npreviously unissued, quote-unquote bonus tracks. “Richard” is an
\nouttake from
\nTormato<\/i>. Think about it; this track wasn’t strong enough to
\nmake it onto what’s generally regarded as Yes’s worst album of the
\n’70s. Uh-huh.<\/p>\n
Next up are three
\nnew!<\/i> 1979 outtakes. “Tango” and “Never Done Before” hail
\nfrom the band’s aborted “Paris sessions,” and make the argument
\nthat they didn’t pull the plug a minute too soon. “Tango” is a
\nponderous, sing-songy waste of tape which sounds like it may have
\nhad Howe’s guitar parts erased. As for “Never Done Before,” if
\nyou’ve ever wanted to know what Yes might sound like as a
\nsecond-rate lounge act, here’s your chance. “Crossfire” follows, a
\npreviously unreleased instrumental featuring Howe, Squire and
\ndrummer Alan White in a directionless little jam.<\/p>\n
And then we’re back to the proceedings at hand. The logical
\ntracks from the band’s ’80s incarnations show up here, with
\n“Machine Messiah” replacing “Does It Really Happen?” from
\nDrama<\/i>, and “Leave It” assuming its rightful place here. The
\nnext innovation is the inclusion of tracks from 1989’s
\nAnderson Bruford Wakeman Howe<\/i> album; the band appears to
\nhave made peace with this fractured episode of its history.<\/p>\n
The ’90s tracks are a bit of a puzzle. Taking two tracks from
\nthe tepid
\nUnion<\/i> album makes sense if you feel obligated to maintain
\nbalance between the two factions represented on that disc. But two
\ntracks from Rabin’s disastrous
\nTalk<\/i> — including the woeful “I Am Waiting” — and only one
\nout of the album-and-a-half’s worth of strong new Classic Yes
\nmaterial on the two
\nKeys To Ascension<\/i> packages? “Mind Drive” is the right
\nchoice, but this is still a disappointing oversight.<\/p>\n
The selections from
\nOpen Your Eyes<\/i> and
\nThe Ladder<\/i> are predictable, yet frustrating;
\nThe Ladder<\/i>‘s “The Messenger” may be about Bob Marley, but
\nthat doesn’t make it a better song than “New Language.” We close
\nthings up with “Last Train,” a shuffling, pointless little outtake
\nfrom the
\nMagnification<\/i> sessions, and that album’s sugary mini-epic
\n“In The Presence Of,” a song the band for some reason favors over
\nthe title track and “Dreamtime,” both of which are punchier and
\nmore dynamic.<\/p>\n
On the bright side, the packaging for
\nIn A Word<\/i> is excellent — the “flipbook” binding of this set
\nis very attractive, and longtime Yes cover artist Roger Dean’s
\ndreamy landscapes feel like old friends. The detailed liner notes
\nare well done, even if raconteurs Chris Welch and Bill Martin do
\ntend to go on a bit getting to the point in their dueling essays
\naddressing (respectively) the history and larger significance of
\nYes.<\/p>\n
As an overview of the band’s work to date,
\nIn A Word<\/i> functions well, even if some of the choices made
\nare easy to second-guess. The reality is, this band still hasn’t
\nissued a truly definitive box set, and one begins to suspect at
\nthis point that doing so may not even be possible. There’s simply
\ntoo much music and too much band and label politics interfering
\nwith the decision-making process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":26585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5713],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37831","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-yes","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37831"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37831"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}