YESSONGS

An excellent value triple live set from Yes, covering the best of their material from The Yes Album to Close to the Edge. The sound quality is alright for an early 70s live album, the performances have a bit of a rawer edge than the clean and polished studio renditions, Alan White takes Bruford's place so easily that you'd be hard-pressed to guess which tracks have White and which have Bruford playing on them, and the song choice is sublime. It's not completely flawless - in particular, the extended version of The Fish drags on for very slightly too long - but it's a very good document of live Yes from what is arguably their most important and influential period.

I wouldn't prioritise getting this over the three studio albums it draws its material from, but if you have got 'em, and you find yourself hankering for live versions, this collection is as good a way to get them as any and I would actually say this has a mild edge over the shows collected in the Progeny set - extracts from some of which ended up on here - since Yessongs offers a mildly more diverse spread of songs.