THE LADDER

After the failure of Open Your Eyes, there were not many expectations that Yes's next work would escape a free fall through musical fields not familiar to the band. Fields they did not handle with much solvency. However, The Ladder results were acceptable. They recover snippets of their progressive roots and combine them with a more industrialized rock. It generates an interesting mix where again Jon Anderson took a leading role in the voices and melodies and Igor Khoroshev on the keyboards. He, the fifth of the band at that point, after his short appearance in Open Your Eyes, was not out of place.

The Ladder left us a few pieces of the best they produced in the 90s, such as Homeworld (The Ladder). This song was the most progressive one of the albums in its more than 9 minutes of length. Also, The Ladder gave us the beautiful and optimistic It Will Be A Good Day (The River) and Nine Voices (Longwalker), a delicate acoustic ballad.

References to previous works can be found in Can I ?, almost a continuation of We Have Heaven by Fragile. Also in New Language, which towards the end reminds us of Tales From Topographic Oceans. Inclusively, the aforementioned Nine Voices, which could be traded for Wonderous Stories from Going For The One and it would have fit perfectly.

On the other hand, the experiment with Latin airs of the festive Lightning Strikes is striking. The most remarkable in my opinion of the rest of the songs that complete the album.

It will not go down in history as one of Yes's best albums, but The Ladder is its best work in the 90s.