YESTERDAYS

I don't know about you, folks, but for me this compilation album resolved a small, but annoying problem: to wit, I had never been able to fully enjoy the 3 first albums of Yes. Guess they didn't quite measure up to Fragile, when taken as a whole?

The Yesterdays seems to have taken the 3 pre-Fragile albums, set aside all the songs that I didn't particularly like, kept in the ones that I had soft spot for, added the excellent Dear Father (which I think wasn't on any of the albums?), and arranged them in such order that you can almost see in time lapse the development stages of the early Yes. What's there not to like?

So, Side A music is a pleasant symph-y pop rock, peppered with some early signs of future grandeur, like Mr. Bruford's most potent drumming and the nascent hurricane of Mr. Squire's bass. On Side B, these signs and attributes continue to accrete and build up to the point of a quantum leap, where the band's sound develops into a powerful, colorful, delicious symph with all necessary "prog" attributes to boot. Which is the hallmark of the best years of Yes.

Originally I gave this album 5 stars, but I think it's more like 4.