CLOSE TO THE EDGE

Same line-up as their previous LP. All of them are probably at their best here. A lot as already been said about this masterpiece. Their first epic and title track (almost 19' - lots of more to come) opens the album magnificently. Although the introduction is quite complex and difficult to access, the remaining sections are fantasctic. Third section "I Get Up I Get Down" is superb : Jon's voice at an all time high, sublime church oriented keyboards. It is really a shivering track and one of my YesPreferred song ever. It will be difficult to render live though. Quite bizarrely, the best live performance (IMO) of CTTE is rendered on the rather poor album "Friends & Relatives" that will be released much, much later (1998). Side B opens with "And You & I" which is also a mini-suite made of four sections. We remain in the masterpiece territory. It is probably the most melodious YesSong ever. It is more than 10 minutes of superb music. On par with "CTTE". This masterpiece ends with "Siberian Kathru" which is a quite rocking song and works best live. Since the original album was rather short, the very interesting expanded edition includes the single version (4'12") of their Simon & Garfunkel cover "America". The full version clocking at more than ten minutes was released on their previous expanded work (Fragile) and is more interesting of course. The excerpts from CTTE "Total Mass Retain" will be released as a single but is not very useful. What is really interesting are the alternate versions for "And You & I" and "Siberia" (first title for "Siberian Kathru"). Although they are less achieved and rawer than the final versions, they are quite nice to discover (the end of &U&I with some echo is very good and could have been used in the final version). It is really worth to get this expanded version. Five stars is the least I can rate this one.