UNION

Basically an album that falls under the "buy it only if you can find it for dirt cheap" category. This is truly YES at their low point. It seemed like in '90/'91 ANDERSON, BRUFORD, WAKEMAN & HOWE wanted to record a followup to their self-entitled 1989, and Yes-West at the same time wanted to record a followup to Big Generator. But since ANDERSON was involved in both, he decided to have both projects fit one album, and it fell really flat on its face. None of the music is unlistenable (at least there is none of that calypso nonsense like "Teakbois" from the ABWH album, which is a plus), but nothing really sticks out to me. "Lift Me Up" received radio airplay, because it stuck with the pop formula the Rabin-era band had been following since 1983. Of course, this was one of the Yes- West recordings of "Union". Same for "Saving My Heart" which also received minor radio airplay, but here the band explored reggae. "Ankor Wat" is one of the ABWH cuts, and tends to have a more New Age-feel to it, I guess that had something to do with the fact that Rick WAKEMAN was turning to the world of New Age on his solo albums at that time.

The album was doomed to be a disaster and not too surprising that WAKEMAN referred to this album as Onion. Even "Tormato", not usually regarded as one of their better albums, seems like a masterpiece compared to this. As I said, only buy "Union" if you can find it for next to nothing.