TALK

I don't like this album because it doesn't like me. I listen to it and find no [major] flaws, yet theres a feeling it gives me which makes me very disastisfied. The cutting edge production may have something to do with it. It's so clean and processed that you can tell (without knowing beforehand) that it's been recorded track by track, overdub by overdub, as opposed to "live". I get an image of Trevor Rabin frantically pressing buttons on a home pc while various Yes members enter the studio one at a time and lay down their part. It's just not very real.

Once I get past this hurdle, the music itself has little to offer as well. The first few songs are a compositional improvement from previous 'Yes-West' albums, or they seem to be on the surface anyway. But their lengths are actually rather unecessary; themes are repeated too often and nothing is developed in an original or "un-generic" way. The more radio-friendly tracks are dire (in a really cringe-worthy way, not like the '90125' singles which actually had some groove). Then there is 'Endless Dream'. The structure of this 15-minute let down is VERY amateurish, with random gaps in the music where Rabin shows off his production skills and clever sound effects. It could be appropiately cropped and become an epic 10-minuter with a much better pace. The artwork for 'Talk' (if you can call it that) is childish [lazy], and the members of Yes sound constantly confused or bored throughout the whole album. Only Rabin knows what he's doing, but it's him that is responsible for general poor quality. Unlike an album where you can ignore anything you don't like, I actually feel like these songs were designed to annoy me; it has this hidden darkness about it that forces me beyond mere indifference.

I gave 'Talk' a fair chance, listening to it over and over. But it's one of the few albums where my first impressions haven't changed. And my first impressions were that Trevor Rabin accidentally wrote the word Yes on his evil 1994 solo album.