FRAGILE

Well, although I like Close To The Edge much more than this one, it's still a masterpiece of Prog Rock. Finally, the Yes' gloriously extended compositions (their trademark, I guess) are shown with all its power!! The first song I listened from them was Roundabout and man, what an intro!!!!!!!! it lasts eight and a half minutes, but it's perfect... I specially love around the 5:20 mark, when that big long instrumental showdown starts... Rick WAKEMAN, like always, shows eye-popping talent, and bandmates Chris SQUIRE and Steve HOWE do as well.. South Side Of The Sky is to me the best one on this album, pay attention to HOWE's unbelievable guitar fingering, and also to the middle part, with those nice vocals and WAKEMAN's classical piano... beautiful! About Heart Of The Sunrise, it drags on a little with that repeating part at the intro, but then Jon ANDERSON's smooth voice and undecifrable lyrics make you instantly forget. In fact, ANDERSON's voice steals the show here: check out that emotion, that feel he puts on the track! when he sings "...with all these hands around me/I feel lost in the city!!!"... God, I almost cried with no particular reason... Basically the other tracks are good showdowns of the band members. You get good, psychedelical singing from ANDERSON in We Have Heaven, WAKEMAN in Cans and Brahms, and a specially tricky rhythm by BRUFFORD (amazing drummer) in Five Percent For Nothing... The Fish is some kind of trippy passage, I can't describe it with precision... Long Distance Runaround shows Chris SQUIRE's amazing talent at bass, and the repeating riff from the intro is addictive. A special one: Mood For A Day. It's an instrumental made by HOWE with just an acoustic guitar... here you can really check out why this guy is considered so good at guitar.. and believe, no matter what you heard, he'll do himself justice. I have a friend of my father who nailed this song on his guitar just by listening... do the test and tell me if he ain't good!!! Just to resume: Fragile shows Yes working at full force, and this comes up even better on latter albums, like Close To The Edge. Because of its features and quality it must clearly be put as an essential prog album, and it's a great initiation to Yes as well... highly recommended!