OPEN YOUR EYES

Fans of Tormato, rejoice! Here is the album that supplants Tormato as the crappiest album in the Yes cannon. You can tell that Yes didn't bring anything at all to the table when they went into studio for this one. Anderson is raiding his solo work for material and Squire is trotting out a song he wrote ages ago and never bothered to record.

New State of Mind: OK, this song gives you a really good idea of what the sound on this album is going to be like. Choppy, clunky and blocky are adjectives that come to mind. You can sort of compare this song to Future Times off Tormato, except this one is modernized, way overproduced, and Steve's guitar solo is far worse. I don't like this song. I don't like this sound. I don't like this album very much either.

Open Your Eyes: This song is way overproduced too, but at least it's catchy and guitar work from both Steve and Billy is up to snuff this time. It kind of reminds me of "Magnification" off the latest studio album, but not quite as good. Still, this is the high point of the album. From here it goes downhill.

Universal Garden: The only song that catches any of the old Yes spirit at all. Some nice guitar work and spacey keyboards are played here. It's not great, but it won't make you feel like you are wasting your time like the rest of the album.

No Way We Can Lose: Well, you sure aren't going to win anything with this laid back, bluesy number that is completely lacking in any creativity or intelligence. Might as well listen to Jon singing "Hey, hey, hey, it's gonna be ok" over Chris playing syncopated quarter notes monotonously for all of the thought that went into composing this one.

Fortune Seller: This joins Open Your Eyes as the only song that is really worth listening to on the album. Yep, it's overproduced, but this time it's a neat song with some good riffs, a driving bass, some good keyboard work, and nifty vocals. Not a masterpiece, but this deserves to be on a better album than this one.

Man In The Moon: We delve deep into Chris Squire's juvenalia with this song. This one should have stayed lost at the bottom of the trunk or desk drawer where he found it. This one is just STUPID!!!

Wonderlove: This one starts out promising, but quickly devolves. It doesn't know where it is going. Is it a bright pop song? Is it a thoughtful ballad? Is it an anthem? Or is it a muddled trainwreck with some of the stupidest lyrics Jon has ever penned?

From The Balcony: A throwaway song where Jon sings over Steve's acoustic guitar. That the OYE tour featured only this song and OYE off the album ought to tell you something. Oh well, at least this one won't make you retch. The next one might, though.

Loveshine: Unlike Wonderlove, this song knows exactly what it is. It's a bright (but muddled) pop song with more stupid lyrics. Yuck.

Siomehow, Someday: It's pretty bad when you are so hard up for material for Yes to play that you have raid Jon Anderson's solo catalog. But that's what happens here. "O'er," which was a fairly good, simple ballad, gets grafted onto this plodding monstrosity. Oh, the humanity!

The Solution: Not quite as bad as the last one, but the solution is clearly not to buy this album in the first place.

This one gets 1.5 stars, because, as crappy as it is, there are worse albums out there. (Rick Wakeman's Rock and Roll Prophet or Tony Banks's The Fugitive are recommended for people who are curious to see just how bad bad can get.) But, as I could not recommend this one even to fans of Yes, I'll round this down to one star.