HEAVEN & EARTH

Heaven & Earth is really the first and so far only Yes album that left me feeling unsatisfied. Union and Open Your Eyes are far from perfect, but at least they have a kind of Yes-like energy to them. H&E just sounds sleepy and uninspired. This was made by four out of five band members who made 1980's Drama, possibly the heaviest Yes album ever made, so for them to make an album that can be compared to Bread or Air Supply, is almost unthinkable.

Yes were apparently rushed when they made this album - a fact that Steve Howe, at least, has admitted to. The production leaves much to be desired - Chris Squire's bass is far back in the mix, Alan White's drums sound thin and dinky. Geoff Downes, whom I consider to be a pretty decent keyboardist, contributes practically nothing except a recapitulation of Aria (the title track of Asia's 1994 album) to the final track on this album. Steve gets some nice intros and a few solos in, and not much else. Jon Davison I will give a pass to, because it was his first time out, but some of the lyrics - "as long as you do your cooking at home" "sweet were the fruits, long were the summer days" (that one might have been Steve's lyric, but nobody bothered to change it) are some of the cringiest, and Jon Anderson could be pretty cringy. I have no complaints about JD as a vocalist, but he lacks some of JA's exuberance. It's hard to describe JA as being "husky" or "gritty", but there's a certain roughness to his vocal that JD lacks. I would liken the difference to an alto sax vs an oboe. Same range, different tone. Also, JA tended to hang on one note for a long time, while JD tends to sing a different note for every syllable. JA seemed to like occasional nonsense words, JD prefers straight lyrics. Difference in approach, but not a knock on either vocalist.

Every song on here could benefit from a 5 to 10 percent increase in speed. There's tons of stuff that could have been edited out to tighten up the arrangements. I made a sped up, edited version of this album that played a lot better for me, but I couldn't fix the lyrics. A shame, as the base songs aren't terrible, and with a little sprucing up, this could be a solid mid-grade album, but as it was released, it's probably the worst. Unfortunately, this is Squire's last album with the band, as he passed away a year after its release. Yes gained some ground with The Quest, which would be drummer Alan White's last with the band, but it was still a fairly laid-back album. The latest album (at the time of writing), Mirror to the Sky was a vast improvement over the previous two.

I like bits of Heaven & Earth, and the Roger Dean cover is wonderful, but the music could have been a whole lot better. I'd welcome a re-edit/re-recording of it in the future.

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