THE LADDER

This album is better than Big Generator and Union and at par with Talk. Nice crystal clear recording-- but you know what, none of the songs are memorable. None of the songs grabs you. there is no sense of adventure here. I suspect its not just the age, but the lack of themes that diluted the creative juice of Yes. Anderson has been saying too much of praising words for god. and he is thanking god in different ways in different songs. Back in the seventies, Anderson was still looking for God-- but he was exploring then. For instance, Close to the Edge went out to describe Buddah's life (or the life Siddharth). Tales dealt with the Hindu teachings of life and religion (funny, the alternate names of each of the four pieces use Sangskrit-- which is also used in my mother tongue Bangla, for instance Puranas (The Ancient) means old in Bangla). Then he came down to more to earthly matters in Relayer (again he puts To be over, yet another soul searching stuff). In going for the one, he puts Wonderous Stories in the same manner. All of these worked fantastically till the Anderson, Wakeman, Bruford & Howe album in 1989. Then he seemed to have found God for the last time-- which is fine for me as his fan. But this time, he was more thankful than exploratory. I never bother much about the lyrical aspect of Yes (I would say Lennon or Ian Anderson write better lyrics)-- I cared about the musical expression they create because that separates them from the other bands. In terms of musical expressions, they gave nothing new here-- despite high expectations. I remember when I heard Tales for the first time, I could not get rid of the tunes out of my head for years. But nothing of that sort will happen with this relatively mediocre album.