CLOSE TO THE EDGE

Yes's Close to the Edge is the definitive album of 70's progressive rock. Featuring three outstanding tracks this is an all killer no filler album. I'm going to discuss my thoughts by going track by track.

Close to the Edge-

This beginning section was quite jarring on first listen but it grew on me a lot. I love the cool chaotic contrapuntal nature. The main theme is hauntingly beautiful and features vocal harmonies reminiscent of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. A couple more minutes of this and this leads us into the psychedelic spacey section of this track "get up get down". Again, featuring some clear inspiration from pet sounds era Beach Boys you got these incredible nice echoey harmonies In the back with Anderson singing his best over some incredible spacey keys and guitar. This eventually reaches a point where everything seems to be rising in tension, volume, and pitch and the piece reaches a cinematic and climactic moment with this incredible church organ played by Rick Wakeman. It's a beautiful moment that defines this piece for me and really showed the artistic genius of the band.

And you and I- This track features quite a lot of sections but the most memorable things about this song for me are Steve Howe's beautiful fingerpicked acoustic guitar playing, Rick Wakeman's dreamy keys, and Jon Anderson's vocals. The song is absolutely gorgeous and it's an emotional and dynamic ride with moments that are soft and melodic and other moments that are anthemic and even some very dreamy key lead sections and it's all beautifully orchestrated and arranged. My favorite moments are the rising climax at minute 5 where we get this beautifully orchestrated choral synth, the vocals are great and bring out the emotions and at 3 minutes with just the acoustic guitar and vocals leading to the rising synth melody. These are two moments that really bring out the magic of this band for me.

Siberian Khatru- Siberian Khatru is the weakest track on the album. That's not to say it's bad quite the contrary it's an amazing yes track, however coming off of the heels of two legendary emotional rollercoasters of yes epics this track just can't compete. I absolutely love the main riff and the groove. The harmonized vocals over these verses are great fun to sing along to and are quite catchy(a rare site in prog). The melodic echoey bridge that comes after each verse is also phenomenal. This leads into quite the cool instrumental section featuring some absolutely incredible Bach style contrapuntal harpsichord playing by Wackeman and an amazing bass groove underneath by the man Chris Squire and later a very well-phrased guitar solo by Steve Howe. Then we get my favorite moment in the piece at around 6 mins where you have these dreamy ethereal keys over some phenomenal vocals that raise the tension before returning back to one of the main themes of the piece. Overall amazing track but not quite the level of the first two. For any other band, this would be top tier but this is Yes we're talking about.

Overall this record is absolutely genius. I'd venture to say it's the best prog-rock album of all time feel free to tell me how I'm wrong about that assertion but I'll defend it forever.

This is a 10/10 if I've ever seen one