\u201cWhat if?\u201d is always a fun game to play, but few bands in history have had more critical junctures at which something could have gone either way than Yes. What if the band hadn\u2019t decided to record their second album in 1969 with an orchestra, triggering the exit of original guitarist Peter Banks and the entrance of Steve Howe? What if Howe, bassist Chris Squire and drummer Alan White hadn\u2019t booked time in the same studio as the Buggles in 1979, leading to the Drama<\/i> album? What if after lead singer Jon Anderson nearly died in the hospital in 2008, Squire and Howe had behaved like loyal friends rather than cold-hearted businessmen?<\/p>\n
And what if the much-heralded 1995 reunion of the band\u2019s late-\u201970s lineup of Anderson, Howe, Squire, White and Rick Wakeman had lasted more than two years and two patched-together live-and-studio-combo albums?<\/p>\n
The folks at Sanctuary Records were at least able to give a hint of the answer to the latter question by packaging together the studio tracks that appeared, alongside selections from the group\u2019s 1995 live reunion shows in San Luis Obispo, California, on 1996\u2019s Keys To Ascension<\/i> and its 1997 follow-up Keys To Ascension 2.<\/i> The resulting album, Keystudio<\/i>, compiles the only existing post-1978 new recordings from the Yes lineup that many longtime fans still think of as \u201cClassic Yes.\u201d (And no, I don\u2019t count that veritable Frankenstein monster Union<\/i>.)<\/p>\n
The tracks consist of two 18-minute-plus epics (one from each original Keys<\/i> set), and five shorter cuts ranging from three to nearly ten minutes. One track\u2014the slightly renamed \u201cChildren Of The Light\u201d\u2014here adds a brief keyboard prologue that was cut from the Keys 2<\/i> version. While the Keys 2<\/i> studio material is discernibly stronger, the track order is jumbled on Keystudio<\/i> for reasons that escape this listener.<\/p>\n
First, the highlights. Keys 2<\/i> cuts \u201cFoot Prints,\u201d \u201cBring Me To The Power,\u201d and the epic \u201cMind Drive\u201d all display the vigor and inventiveness and melodicism for which Yes is justly known. The return of Squire\u2019s prominent \u201clead bass\u201d work is especially notable on these tracks given that he seemed to slumber through much of the band\u2019s previous 15 years of work. There\u2019s one moment in particular\u2014the intense, dynamic instrumental jam between 11:30 and 12:30 of \u201cMind Drive\u201d\u2014that will have longtime fans like this one pointing a finger and saying \u201cThat\u2019s it\u2014that\u2019s the old magic, right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flashes of that same magic, found somewhere deep in the blend of Anderson and Squire\u2019s layered harmonies, the four instrumentalists\u2019 prodigious musical chops, and Anderson\u2019s mystical-sound-painting lyrics, appear throughout the remainder of the tracks, with mixed results. \u201cBe The One\u201d offers some promising moments but feels overcrowded with lyrics that aren\u2019t among Anderson\u2019s best. Its KTA 1<\/i> companion, the epic \u201cThat, That Is,\u201d is a hodgepodge of ideas and moments that never achieve the sort of flow that makes the best of the band\u2019s other long-form pieces gel.<\/p>\n
The remaining KTA 2<\/i> tracks are stronger. The restored opening to \u201cChildren Of The Light\u201d adds little to the original, but overall it\u2019s a solid, punchy tune anchored by Wakeman\u2019s rippling piano work, Squire\u2019s ribcage-rattling bass, and Anderson and Squire\u2019s layered harmonies. \u201cSign Language\u201d offers a pleasant and moody, if somewhat inconsequential, duet between Howe and Wakeman.<\/p>\n
What strikes this listener when hearing these tracks again is the way Steve Howe\u2019s playing has changed over the years. Even here, on arguably the best new music that Yes has issued since 1977\u2019s Going For The One<\/i>, Howe\u2019s playing is more technically proficient than powerful. It seems that joining Asia in the early \u201980s changed his playing style permanently, robbing him of the grit and rawness heard on Close To The Edge<\/i> and Yessongs<\/i> and Relayer<\/i>. Some of his lines here are fast, even aggressive, but his tone is so antiseptically clean that the end result doesn\u2019t carry nearly the impact that it could.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, Keystudio<\/i> is a messy jumble of an album, assembled from parts that don\u2019t always fit, in a run order that makes little sense. On the other hand, it\u2019s arguably the best studio album Yes has put out in the last 37 years. As for the \u201cwhat if\u201d posed at the beginning of this review, while we\u2019ll never truly know, this album offers hints of the magic the band might have been able recapture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5713],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-43885","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-yes","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43885","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=43885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43885"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}