TOPOGRAPHIC DRAMA: LIVE ACROSS AMERICA

This double album is either a latter-day triumph or a ridiculous piece of nonsense, depending on how you want to view it. As a veteran Yes fan with a clear preference for the band's classic era (1971-1974) and with a love of DRAMA, I was curious to find out how the band managed to play the old 'Buggles' album AND more than half of TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS as late as 2017. I was not disappointed. Despite slowish speeds, both 'The Revealing Science of God' and 'Ritual' are performed with an eye for detail and with great sensitivity. Steve Howe's contributions are as masterly as ever, Billy Sherwood is a first-class replacement for Chris Squire, Geoff Downes does what he needs to do on keyboards, Jay Schellen takes care of all the drum parts Alan White can no longer reach, and (dare I say it) Jon Davison sings even better than the one performer who really ought to be here, Jon Anderson. (Although that Davison does sound a little bloodless at times.) And DRAMA must have been real fun to play; as a listener you can tell!

So why the 'ridiculous piece of nonsense'? Well, the entire album sounds suspiciously as if it was recorded during a soundcheck or rehearsal. There's no indication as to which gigs it derives from. Audience noises were pasted on long after the fact and pop up at the most inopportune moments. In my opinion it's completely unthinkable that today's largely middle-aged, sit-down audiences would start cheering and clapping at least FIFTEEN times during a twenty-two minute piece of music, as they do here. Sometimes the mechanical cheering gets really annoying: in the Disc Two drum workout some anonymous male voice keeps shouting 'Oh yeah! Oh yeah!' as if he was in a cheap porn flick. As for the familiar 'extras' , I tried 'Heart of the Sunrise' and 'Starship Trooper'. The latter (probably my favourite Yes tune) sounds lifeless and far too slow, so I gave 'And You And I' and 'Roundabout' a miss.

So how to grade this? Worth hearing, perhaps, but definitely not essential.