TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS

I have never tried as hard to understand and enjoy an album as I have Tales from Topographic Oceans. I first bought the cassette in 1988, during which time I was "bingeing" on Yes. I'd listen to it back-to-back with Going for the One, Relayer, Close to the Edge, and the other 1969-1980 cassettes. The Yes Album was the first album to stand out from the others. Little by little, I began to understand Close to the Edge as a distinct work. Eventually, Tales and Relayer were the only "main sequence" albums that still didn't make sense to me.

By the time I bought a CD player a few years later, I was a committed Yes fan. I dutifully upgraded my collection, Tales included, to CD. The same was true the mid-90s when the Gastwirt remasters were released, and around 2002 when Rhino released "expanded" remasters of all of the albums through 90125. Each time I found something more to appreciate in Tales from Topographic Oceans. In particular, the Rhino remaster contained an earlier take of "The Ancient," which marked the first time I could actually say I liked a song from the album. The 17:18 track ("Giants Under the Sun (Studio Run-Through)") is a little shorter than the final (18:35) version, but contains the elements which would wind up on the official album. It's much rougher and more experimental; especially due to the guitar parts, it could've fit on Relayer without much tweaking. Unfortunately, none of the other three "run-through" demos were any better than the final versions. Two appeared on the Rhino CD (takes of "The Revealing Science of God" and "The Remembering"), and the last ("Ritual") on a Highland bootleg.

About ten years later, Steven Wilson remixed Tales from Topographic Oceans from the original multitracks. It now sounded miles better than the cassette had. It contained not only the studio run-throughs, but a number of other tracks, including instrumental versions of the new Wilson remixes. But ultimately the source material still pales in comparison to the rest of Yes' output from this era.

I continue to listen to Tales straight through about twice a year, but I must say, after thirty years, I still don't get it. It's easy to say of any double album that a one-disc version would've been better. I think that can be true in some cases, such as Prince's 1999. But the reverse can also make sense: based on archival re-releases and bootlegs, it's clear that Prince had enough material for Purple Rain (the follow-up to 1999) to have been a masterpiece double album. Yet he edited it down to a single album, possibly in response to criticism that 1999 had been padded. But ultimately, I believe the charge of "padding" against Tales from Topographic Oceans is justified. Certainly the 1:18 added to "The Ancient" adds little but length. And the fact that each of the four songs occupied one side of a 12-inch vinyl record makes it clear that the composition of the final songs was influenced by their length. (Of course, this doesn't mean they were "padded;" they could just as easily been edited down from 25 minutes each, for example. Furthermore, to some degree, running time has to be a factor in nearly every song released on vinyl.)

Tales contains wonderful sections here and there, and the performances, especially Rick Wakeman's, are up to Yes standards - - as many, many other reviewers have described in detail. For example, had it been a standalone track on Tormato, "Leaves of Green" woud've been one of that album's highlights. But most of the material seems to have been pre-programmed, interpolated from a too-restrictive blueprint, rather than having emerged organically. The concepts on which the album was built were also probably insufficiency understood by the project's architects, Steve Howe and Jon Anderson, and, I suspect, without the counterbalance of recently departed drummer Bill Bruford, Howe and Anderson were given free reign by the rest of the band and by Eddy Offord, the producer. Indeed, Close to the Edge (1972), the group's last album with Bruford (unless you count Union), is recognized on this site as the pinnacle of prog rock. And to their great credit, Anderson, Howe, and company seem to have learned their lesson from Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973); their next album (Relayer, 1974) is, in my opinion, their masterpiece.

So how to rate this album? I certainly don't consider it "excellent" (four stars), and given its redeeming characteristics - - despite what you may think from my criticisms - - I also don't consider it "poor" or "only for completionists" (one star). Of the remaining choices, "Collectors/fans only" - - two stars - - seems to fit best. Perhaps after a few more years of study, I'll change my mind.