FRAGILE

Sorry if i do a correction, gimson. This is fourth album of Yes, not the third (the previous were Yes, Time and a Word and The Yes Album). Out of that, is an excellent album with a great mixture of musical knowledge, great melodies and emotion. Maybe some people could say it is an individual album, but the white album of the beatles was an individual album too. The reason to talk about individual music is the presence of pieces written by each one of the members of the band. So, Mood for a Day is the moment for Steve Howe in the acoustic guitar, playing a piece that is spanish for moments, baroque for moments. Chris Squire appears with "The Fish", piece that will be his live bass solo from this album on. Bill Bruford includes a strange, short an non-armonic piece called "Five per Cent for Nothing"... and is easy to see the direction of his music going to King Crimson. "We have Heaven" is the Anderson moment, being in fact a play of a lot of voices recorded one over each other (all them for Anderson, i guess). And "Cans and Brahms" is the Wakeman solo, that shows his classical music studies and once he allow himself to play a little with a classical author. But the pieces where the band plays like an unity are really great. "Roundabout" is wonderful, starting with some acoustic notes with Steve Howe and including in the middle-part an incredible solo of Rick Wakeman... and the Rickenbaker of Chris Squire sounds incredible, powerful. "South Side of the Sky" is another great song, with a lot fo changes and mysterious moments... Unfortunately the band forgot to play this song for years after the tour of "Fragile" and they decided to play it again in... 2002!!! "Long Distance Rounaround" shows such a great creator of melodies in Anderson, and the harmonic play is really great. And probably the masterpiece of the album is "Heart of the Sunrise".. those who use to say Yes was not heavy enough, should have listened the amazing beginning of this song. Is once chaos and harmony, order and disorder... The band sounds lie a bomb and suddenly the rythm changes and the bass of Chris Squire stays alone starting a new rythm but once playing with some melody... And if you hear attently the performance of Squire in this part, please do not forget to pay attention to Bill Bruford, coz is incredible! And then the guitar of Steve Howe appears again... from the botton, down to up... rediscovering the initial leid-motiv of the theme ´til capture the rest of the band doing them to go with it again... And when the chaos stoppes, the baroque melody sung by Anderson is wonderful... As Yes use to do, there is a "circle-idea" in the most songs. "Roundabout" end with the same notes that Howe played at the beginning, once again with the same acoustic guitar. And "Heart of the Sunrise" ends with the chaotic climax of the beginning (chaotic in the good sense of the word). And titles like "Long Distance Runaround" don´t need any explanation about the idea of the circle.