I love Fragile, and I've always seen it as the better album of the two proposed here, but for me, the best Yes albums are.... uhhh.... The Yes Album, and Relayer.

CTTE remains one of my favourite albums of all time - I love Siberian Khatru and with And You and I and the title track, the whole album is somehow wonderfully whole and integrated. In fact the only bit I occasionally struggle with is the first minute or two of the free-form jazzy jamming of the title track. When I used to play it to friends in the hope of converting them to prog and Yes all those years ago, they tended to comment how messy it was, and I would ask them to stick with it until the main themes developed from it. Not many did!

Fragile has amazing highs, and is not far behind CTTE- but I agree that the solo bits mean it lacks that coherence. Definitely interesting though. However, I also would put The Yes album marginally higher - as it also has a rounded quality to it, and starting with Yours is No Disgrace and ending with Starship Trooper is rather impressive. Given that Wakeman hadn't replaced Kaye then (so many fans don't see it in the classic line up canon) - this and the other two are an exceptional run of albums. For me, Tales ended this purple patch, but if they'd put out Sides 1 and 4 as a single album instead (as Wakeman has often suggested) it would have been up there with the other three in my humble view.


Edited by Squonk19 - October 25 2017 at 02:21

The inclusion of Siberian Katru on Close to Edge is, IMHO, a plus, not a negative. Without it, I would rank ccte lower than Fragile. With it, its a toss up.

Here's my take on this. It's only in the past ten years or so that CTTE has been considered their ultimate album and one of(if not THE) ultimate prog albums. Don't get me wrong. I think CTTE is great and it deserves most of the belated recognition it has received over the past several years or so but I don't think it's THAT much better than Fragile or even TYA or relayer. Actually relayer is probably my personal favorite Yes record with CTTE possibly coming in second. Fragile is special to me though because it's one of the first ones I bought. A lot of people these days seem to have problems with the shorter tracks on Fragile with some people even going so far as to call them "filler." Well, of course they are filler in the strictest sense of the term because they weren't meant to be group compositions. However, that by itself doesn't make them bad. At some point the term "filler" came to be used mostly in a pejorative way which is unfortunate. So anyway, at some point CTTE started to get all this recognition and has showed up in best prog album lists usually in the top ten while Fragile has taken a back seat. On the allmusic website however, it's Fragile that is the one with the star next to it(being the one recommended to start with)and the one with the most ratings. Most other sites though(including this one and RYM)have CTTE as their best and most popular. Ultimately I would say it's up to personal taste and preference though. 

Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - October 17 2017 at 15:23

chopper wrote: someone_else wrote: Mood for a Day is more or less on par with any Yes epic   Really?

siLLy puPPy wrote: Big Generator blows the both of their asses out of the water. LOVE WILL FIND AWAY rules!!!!

LOL, BG isn't even a good album.

Simply put (by a simpleton), CTTE was a masterpiece while Fragile was a showcase exhibiting individual members' bents, capped off by the bravissimo South Side of the Sky.

Tom Ozric wrote: BrufordFreak wrote: While CttE is more polished and perfect, flows amazingly well, I have always felt way more connected to Fragile. The individuals, all, shine so well on all of the songs, not just the "solo" compositions. And there are many more "peak" moments on Fragile than on CttE (though there are also more lows). I have always rated and favored Fragile more highly. Pretty much sums up how I would’ve put it

Without the jarring reprise of Jon Anderson's awful drivel at the end of Heart of the Sunrise I think it'd be competitive and some of the solo pieces are just a little light.

If it were "The Yes Album" and not "Fragile" you were talking about then I'd think you would have more of a discussable argument.  But "Fragile" vs CTTE then CTTE wins on all categories imo.