THE YES ALBUM

After listening to Relayer everyday for months and hearing Fragile at a friend's house, I decided to start backtracking into Yes's previous releases. This one came to me sometime in 1976 and received a lot of airplay for a while. I loved the vocals of "Your Is No Disgrace" and "I've See All Good People" and the guitar soli in "Starship Trooper" and "Perpetual Change"--and "The Clap" wowed me for a long time. Eventually I got tired of what felt/sounded to me like Steve Howe's "country-tinged" guitar stylings. Listening to the album as I write this I realize what extraordinary work Chris Squire did throughout this album. It feels to me as if he was far ahead of the rest of the band in terms of his stylistic and technical development. Bruford is still up and coming (and mixed a little into the back) and Tony Kaye's keyboards are just a part of the background to Squire and Howe's genius and Anderson's voice. Still, I do enjoy these songs, especially the "Würm" part of "Starship Trooper" when Howe is dueling with himself, the opening staccato strumming and establishment of "Perpetual Change" and the unusual song structure and medieval sounds of one of my all-time favorite Yes songs, "I've See All Good People" (10/10). Still, this album does not stand up well next to the amazing creative heights of their next few albums.