OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW

When all Yes members released solo-albums back in the mid-1970s I got a copy of each, with the exception of Alan White's RAMSHACKLED. I played them as often as I'd have played any Yes album, but in the 1980s for some reason I got embarrassed about owning them, so I got rid of Steve Howe's BEGINNINGS, Chris Squire's FISH OUT OF WATER and Patrick Moraz' THE STORY OF I. The only one I hung on to was OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW, mainly because it featured the most spectacular gatefold sleeve, with illustrations by Dave Fairbrother Roe. His colourful drawings looked like Arthur Rackham fairy tales, something which - even in 1976 - I did not exactly find cool, but I thought: "This is unique, I really should preserve this, just to show my children later!" Record players soon went out of fashion though, and I never acquired an OLIAS CD. I think I never even listened to the album from the early 1980s until just a few weeks ago (early March, 2023).

Rediscovering my old OLIAS L.P. (with the help of a cheap portable record player) was a pleasant surprise! In contrast to FISH OUT OF WATER, which I find terribly overblown (not to mention that I can't stand Chris Squire's bleating) and in contrast to BEGINNINGS, half of which is unlistenable (mainly because of Steve Howe's vocals and execrable lyrics) good ole' Jon Anderson's solo debut turned out to sound incredibly fresh and invigorating. I then went on to to buy the 2021 Cherry Red Records CD reissue, just to find out why this was so. (And no, I'm not in the pay of Cherry Red Records!) I then came to the conclusion that our Jon had written at least a couple of songs which are as catchy as anything Yes ever did - most notably 'Sound Out the Galleon' and 'The Flight of the Moorglade'. Even though he's anything but a virtuoso on drums, synths, guitars or harp, he also created a number of instrumentals which are very pleasant to the ear. Furthermore, he came up with a number of chants ('canons' or 'rounds' I guess you could call them) which are similar in spirit to Yes's 'We Have Heaven' but far subtler in execution. And finally, he took great care with keyboards/harp/percussion/backing vocal arrangements for the entire album. As a result, OLIAS is truly a rich and rewarding listening experience. I guess it helps that Anderson completed the whole thing at home on his own (with only a sound technician to assist him) so there was no band he had to struggle with. And he ended up singing most of the new songs fairly low in his register, which makes them easier on the ear than GOING FOR THE ONE or TORMATO, both of which sound rather shrill.

Of course you'll need some suspension of disbelief to fully embrace a J.A. solo album. After all, this is a man who writes lines such as 'Total relating appointed close factors / of what we regard as the answer lies there' without embarrassment. Some of his wordless vocals are perhaps a little soppy as well - New Age avant-la-lettre. Moreover, his SF/fantasy/fairy-tale concept seems half-baked at best. But the sheer loveliness of most of his tunes and - dare I say it - the majesty of his best instrumentals make up for any deficiencies.

In my view, there was only one mid-seventies Yes member whose solo achievement came close to Anderson's: Patrick Moraz, with his highly eccentric THE STORY OF I. And for the sake of completeness it's only fair to add that both of them were solidly beaten just two years later, by the first solo effort from ex Yes member Bill Bruford: FEELS GOOD TO ME.