TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS

I have waited a long while to review this and I think I'm finally ready. Anyway this album was a bit of a disapointment for me, I think because I expected four epic songs of the Close to the Edge/Gates of Delirium/Awake caliber, but instead you get four cohesive, if somewhat fluffed pieces which work much better as a whole album than individual songs.

Well anyway, this album could have been great. A lot of stuff on here is classic Yes, but it is lost in all the pointless filler soloing. I think Yes could have cut the album down a good bit, and made things a little more epic. That's the thing, this album is big on being *pretty*- but there is no beauty ala Soon or parts of Awaken. It stays like the same mood the whole time.

Most of the great parts here are from Jon Anderson himself, because the intrumental parts are not great. I think they should have cut this down to about 50 minutes, and it would have worked way better, and been more cohesive. However, while this was a disapointment for me, there is enough good stuff to make this better than Fragile, so 3.75 it is. 4 stars.