If Yes were the Beatles, Billy Sherwood would be their Billy Preston.\u00a0 The fifth Beatle \/ sixth man, the guy who came in late in the lifespan of the group, helped revitalize it for a brief time, and then went off to do his own thing, continuing to work often with members of the famous group he\u2019d been associated with for a time.<\/p>\n
Of course, Yes has never really broken up, not counting 1980-83, but it\u2019s been fractious enough again and again that there been plenty of opportunities for members to work with others, whether they were in or out of the main group at the time.<\/p>\n
In the case of the original lineup of Circa, both halves of the last statement were true.\u00a0 Circa was born out of a collaboration between Sherwood and founding Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye, and grew to include longtime Sherwood pal (and fellow Yes fan) guitarist Jimmy Haun and longtime Yes drummer Alan White.\u00a0 After White\u2019s \u201cother band\u201d called him back to touring duty, Sherwood recruited another longtime ally, Jay Schellen (Conspiracy, World Trade) to man the drum kit for HQ<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The result is a thoroughly satisfying follow-up to Circa\u2019s excellent debut.\u00a0 The superb musicianship, crisp production and often-lovely quiet moments, you expect; what provides a happy bonus is the increasing confidence and craft of the group\u2019s songwriting.\u00a0 The music is every bit as strong as 2007<\/i>, albeit less riff-focused and a bit dreamier, but just as compelling in its ever-shifting moods and flavors.\u00a0 Furthermore, the lyrics \u2013 not an obvious strength on 2007<\/i> \u2013 reveal themselves as an excellent fit for the band\u2019s name, comprising a sort of narrative of the present moment, examining the increasing intrusion of technology into our daily lives and the perpetual search for meaning and purpose.<\/p>\n
Sure, you may ask — but does it rock?<\/p>\n
It does.\u00a0 Ten-minute-plus opener \u201cIf It\u2019s Not Too Late\u201d might have some sleepy moments, but there\u2019s thunder aplenty to balance it out and everyone gets their chance to shine, as they do again on the driving instrumental \u201cSet To Play,\u201d which uses Kaye\u2019s organ as the bridge (think \u201cForeplay\/Long Time\u201d) for the band to plunge into the steady-rocking \u201cEver Changing World.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
In between, the boys prove their brand of modern prog is not without humor.\u00a0 \u201cHaun Solo\u201d is in fact proof of how slow I can be sometimes; when I first read the title I thought \u201cthey couldn\u2019t give it a real name?\u201d\u00a0 Then I said it out loud and the light bulb finally went on.\u00a0 Somewhere, George Lucas is chuckling\u2026\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And let it be said \u2013 Haun\u2019s playing here is definitely of hyper-drive caliber.\u00a0 He pulls off any number of nimble twisty-turny solos and experiments with a variety of tones, and while he can still sound like Steve Howe at times, he sounds more and more these days like no one other than Jimmy Haun.\u00a0 \u201cTwist Of Fate,\u201d for example, features some wonderfully crinkly-scratchy Haun soloing around two minutes in, which he follows with another sharp, evocative performance on \u201cAll Intertwined.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The latter, buried as track nine, is in fact a huge clue to this band\u2019s musical DNA, as it often sounds remarkably like Cinema, the short-lived Rabin-Squire-White-Kaye lineup that preceded the 80s edition of Yes, created when Jon Anderson joined.\u00a0 The one song to survive unaltered from those sessions, \u201cCinema,\u201d has a distinctively bold and orchestral feel that the other Rabin-era stuff never had \u2013 a feel that Circa has captured and evolved into what it could have been, which is the missing stylistic bridge between old-school, free-form, experimental classic-prog 70s Yes and the more concise and riff-oriented 80s version.\u00a0 For any fan of Yes who\u2019s ever wished the band could find a way to bridge that gap, it\u2019s right here; Billy Sherwood and Tony Kaye studied the clues and solved the puzzle.\u00a0 Which makes perfect sense since Sherwood is such a Squire and Rabin fan, and he and Kaye started Circa with White and Haun.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The thing about this album that\u2019s really striking to me, though, is Tony Kaye.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the guy who essentially got pushed out of Yes in 1971 when the rest of the group decided what they really wanted was a Rick Wakeman, someone who had the classical chops and the orchestral sensibilities and played seventeen different keyboards and could make synthesizers do everything but get up and dance.\u00a0 And for most of his career, Tony Kaye has been a really good Hammond organ player and that\u2019s about it.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Until now, that is.\u00a0 The first and especially this second Circa album are the best performances of Kaye\u2019s career, hands down.\u00a0 His Hammond work is not just impeccable but as dynamic as it\u2019s ever been, and he\u2019s expanded his palette to include new synth tones and even a flash of rather Wakemanesque synthesized church organ, heard on closer \u201cRemember Along The Way.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s extremely strong work, and he pulls it off as the elder statesman of the band, a 63-year-old keyboard wizard not just keeping up with but constantly pushing a group of guys a full generation younger than him.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cRemember Along The Way\u201d in fact deserves more than just the above passing mention.\u00a0 For the second album in a row Circa has chosen to close out with a mini-epic that\u2019s worth every minute of the 12:36 the band devotes to it.\u00a0 Kaye kicks it off with the aforementioned Wakemanesque church-organy opening section before the group falls into a Pink Floyd groove, a slow blues with spectacular, arcing-skyward guitar solos that would make David Gilmour grin.\u00a0 Then we move into a little acoustic pastoral thing with Kaye playing keys that sound like flutes (mellotron, maybe?) and \u201cHan\u201d Haun playing wonderful acoustic.\u00a0 The final big solo section between minutes 11 and 12 is again heavily Floyd-influenced.<\/p>\n
The great thing about Circa, though, is that while they are band that wears their influences on their sleeves, this is no tribute album; this is an original, compelling and terrifically entertaining piece of work.\u00a0 Floyd-heads, Yeswholes and modern prog fans alike should eat this up like the delicious brew of classic and modern prog that it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8019],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41410","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-circa","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41410","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=41410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41410"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41410"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}