Yes, are recent albums spoilt?

Evandro Martini wrote: If someone in recent Yes has not lost his talent, it is Steve.

Mousoleum wrote: Is it just me, or has Steve Howe forgotten how to create chord structures? It's all solos and scales these days. Don't get me wrong, he's a master, but lets here some more blues, more feeling, more songwriting. Lets see those jazz chops put to better use in the future.

I completely disagree. Steve has done wonderful solo albums (better than the two he did in the 70s, IMO) and if you hear them you'll see many examples of masterful harmonic work. For example, in his Quantum Guitar, from 1998, there's a 10-minutes-long song, Suddenly, with carefully chord progressions, in a way that ressembles Mike Oldfield, the song changes a lot but always seems to continue  in the same harmonic patterns (though they do change, the listener doesn't notice).
His album Natural Timbre (2001), all with acoustic guitars, is his best one IMO, and features originally structured songs such as Piramidology, and the lovely Intersection Blues.

If someone in recent Yes has not lost his talent, it is Steve.

Jon Anderson's singing on Magnification is IDEAL (Actually I think Magnification in Yes' best album). And about his lyrics... one should never try to find any reason in them, mostly :) But they do create such a strange atmosphere... You're the song from the book of time, hehe :)) 

Jon Anderson is awesome...nuff said. But if I were to pick at modern Yes a bit, I'd have to agree that Anderson's whimsical lyrics have turned from ambiguous zen-nature chantings to the south side of sappy. Have you seen them live since Open Your Eyes??? "So real, so real, I love my wife. Oh, sweet Janey!" It's enough to drive you mild.

The lyric that ruined Magnification for me: "Through the eyes of child." Ouch.
Car horns need to stay out of music.
Stick to rivers, Mr. Anderson.

Since I'm being picky..

Is it just me, or has Steve Howe forgotten how to create chord structures? It's all solos and scales these days. Don't get me wrong, he's a master, but lets here some more blues, more feeling, more songwriting. Lets see those jazz chops put to better use in the future.   

ghost_of_morphy wrote: The only thing that I really blame Jon for spoiling is That, That Is.  It's such a great song if you can block out the second and third parts, and I think you can make a good case that Jon bears a lot of the responsibility for why it falls short.

Totally agreed! The song begins perfectly, but then... it has too many lyrics!

jwxlite wrote: I dont think he does. Magnification and the ladder are the best yes albums since the 80s.

Yes I agree they recaptured their form. I was refreshing to rediscover them.

Still a great singer, but IMO he ruined Magnification for me.........or the band did by filling the songs with vocals.  There are just too many of them.  It's hard to focus on the music underneath at the vocals are so prominent.  Some of the lyrics are decent, some quite bad to my ears.  But mostly, I just wish they would have let the songs breath a little, done some interesting instrumental parts to off set the every present vocals.

I've always Jons singing but in truth at times I think its a bit much that I have to really enjoy the music to get past it (I got this feeling with Relayer)
Its a group effort though

I agree that Jon has been spoiling Yes, not by oversinging, but by his melodies.

Jon has been composing vocal melodies since the very start of the band. He has never studied composition in a school or something like that, but until Tormato he created delightful melodies, not even one poor melody.

But since then he seems to have lost his composing talent almost completely. If one hears Jon singing on Lightning Strikes or That, That Is, it's almost unbeliavable that the same person created melodies such as (the vocal parts from) And You And I and Heart of the Sunrise.

So I credit him to spoiling Yes. Squire is still excelent making harmonies and countrpoints, Steve has created beautiful solo albums (Natural Timbre, from 2001, is my favourite), Rick Wakeman has also made some good ones, so I can only conclude it's Jon who lost his talent.


Another problem in Yes recent albums is that, now they're older and have their own families and live in different cities, they can't have the same style of composing from the 70s, when they saw each other everyday, and every song had ideas of each member...

Concise, creative, inspired, melodies. That is all that is needed. The rest will flow.