TORMATO

Yes continued down the path of shortening their songs and making their material more accessible, but now it felt like they were starting to run dry on ideas. Tormato, released in 1978, was Yes's weakest album to date. Its weak moments amplified the weaker moments of Going for the One and brought little of that album's positive attributes.

The band sound exhausted and going through the movements on quite a few songs. None of the songs top eight minutes (which, in light of the weakness of the material, is probably a good thing in this instance). The ballads here are awful, and it confirms that Yes should have focused on instrumental dynamism. "Circus of Heaven" has one of Jon Anderson's kids  on it (children are never, ever good additions to rock music), and "Arriving UFO" gets lost in its own weirdness. (The bevy of bonus tracks on the remastered CD release further underscore this issue. Almost all of them are crap.)

The strongest tracks on Tormato are all high-energy and relatively heavy for Yes's repertoire. "Future Times/Rejoice" and "Release, Release" sound like rough cuts of songs that could have been on Going for the One. They needed to be workshopped and fine-tuned, but there was something good there. "Don't Kill the Whale" is also quite enjoyable in its absurdity. The unquestionable high point of the album is Chris Squire's "On the Silent Wings of Freedom". Here, Yes's bassist gets a chance to flex and show off his unique playing style; the effects on his bass are courtesy of a pedal of his own invention. Though thanks to the synth tones and Steve Howe's particular style of playing, this song is unmistakably a late '70s song, it can be held up against any of their much better-known material from earlier that decade.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/