TALK

I don't know what happened exactly between UNION and TALK, but the 80s line-up reunited tp produce one last album. This is the last TREVOR RABIN appearance with YES, but he will leave with a bang. On TALK, RABIN is not sharing any leadership with Anderson. This is a RABIN album with YES members as back-up band; no less. I think the only contribution of JON ANDERSON is limited to the lyrics.

TREVOR RABIN plays guitar ,sings, plays keyboards (yes,Tony KAYE playsonly hammond) , programs, engineers, and of course produces the album through a computer; did i mention he composes the songs as well?? and of course, i am sure he told the other 4 members that the services of designer ROGER DEAN were again no longer needed, thus back to ugly and dull cover artwork; i guess his choice of covers is not his strong point.

Like any other RABIN-era Yes album, we have a mixed bag of horrible plain pop songs that tend to sound all the same after a while.Trevor RABIN knows how to find hooks when composing, the problem after a while, it's always a little bit the same thing, repeated ad nauseam.

So what's good, what's bad? Let start with the ugly, the cold production of the album.The album is like the cover,it has no warmth, no coziness, that's bland sound with almost all the time, horrible drums on the forefront. And believe me , ALAN WHITE is not being asked to copy BILL BRUFORD; You could have put a drum machine and it would sound the same. Also The bass playing from CHRIS SQUIRE has become almost non-existent. Whatever happened to the old glorious basslines from YESteryear? That's the very bad part.Some songs are irritating like the horrible ''state of play'' or the dull ''walls'' .

But after that, that's not bad at all: ''The Calling'' is classic pop songs but with good hooks and nice arrangements. ''I am waiting'' is just plain beautiful ballad as is ''where will you be'', which could sound like old YES. And for the first time in years, YES comes back with an epic ''endless dream''. I guess RABIN wanted to show that he could compose an epic too as he was about to leave the band. Oh! this is not ''The gates of delirium'' or other good oldie from the glorious times, but that's a very interesting 15mn piece of music with a lot of rythm changes, sometimes hard-rocking, sometimes sweet and peaceful. This is almost a solo piece as TREVOR RABIN is in charge of guitars and keyboards and do a lot of vocals l I guess it was his swansong, his testament when saying goodbye to YES.

So with some good parts, some excellent parts, some dull parts and some ugly parts, with a horrible production, i would put classify this album as average..... so let's go with 3 stars. But good news: the great YES is about to return soon!!

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