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90125YesSymphonic Prog3.06 | 1914 ratings |
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Warthur
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Maybe it's best to think of 90125 not as the eleventh Yes album, but as the debut album of Cinema - which is exactly what
it was going to be before the return of Jon Anderson to the fold prompted the decision to reconstitute Yes rather than
leaving the name vacant. Whichever name you apply to them, what you get here essentially consists of the members of
Drama-era Yes who didn't split off to establish Asia, plus Jon Anderson on vocals, Trevor Rabin on guitar, and Tony Kaye
returning to the keyboard post. (Sure, Trevor Horn might not have been part of the band line-up here, but he was at the
mixing desk as a producer.)Under such circumstances, there was really two ways they could jump: they could have tried to do Drama Part 2, or they could formulate their own response to what former Yes-men Downes and Howe were getting up to in Asia. It's pretty apparent from the opening track that it's mostly the latter, but there's the odd gentle hint of the former here, as well as enough moments where Jon Anderson's voice is used for its own instrumental effect (as on Jon's solo albums) to distinguish it. Indeed, the success of the album may reside in the way it embraces the new whilst finding cunning ways of embracing the old. On the "new" side of things there's the two Trevors, of course, with Rabin making his own presence felt as a vocalist as well as a guitarist and Horn giving things a clean 1980s sheen behind the production desk. At the same time, there's plenty of more hippy-ish moments here and there, both in the lyrics and in the occasional bit of psychedelic sitar in an intro here, a gentle acoustic passage there which suggests that the band is not wholly disconnected from its past - touches which feel like they particularly come from Jon Anderson. though of course the role of Chris Squire in providing the bedrock of Yes over the years should never be underestimated. Then there's the little moments of complexity which reveal that the band hadn't entirely lost sight of prog - you wouldn't put something like the outro to Changes on an album which solely cared about pop appeal. It's that little bit of heart which helps 90125 appeal more immediately to me than much of the Asia back catalogue does: whilst Asia feels just a little bit too calculated for mass appeal, 90125 contains just enough of the Yes heritage (even if you think of this as more of a Cinema album than a Yes one) and just enough left-field moments to help it feel just a touch more sincere. And you've gotta admit, Owner of a Lonely Heart is a pretty good song.
Warthur |
4/5 |
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