TIME AND A WORD

Time and a Word doesn't sit with me as well as the debut. The overall feel of the album is much darker, whereas the debut was happier and poppy. However, this album is more progressive than the self-titled debut, so Time and a Word probably will sit better with someone looking for the most progressive of pre-classic era Yes. Aside from being a darker sounding album throughout, orchestrations make their first presence on a Yes album. The orchestrations are not extremely elaborate and come off sounding very Terry Riley minimalist styled, and they don't really add anything significant to the music.

A few songs do stand quite well on their own. The opener, "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed", is a very strong rock song with terrific organ, catchy chorus, and Squire's heavy bass thumping. Not a very experimental song, but definitely a great opening song. "The Prophet" is very dark and sounds like it could've come off of the Trespass album by Genesis. "Then" is probably the most progressive song on the album, and packs in a remarkable amount of short interesting passages throughout it's short duration. "Astral Traveler" is a very driving rock song with weird underwater sounding vocals, which I assume are supposed to sound astral. "Sweet Dreams" is probably the most optimistic and poppy song on the album, and is quite fun to listen to and definitely sounds post-hippie.

This is a good album from pre-classic era Yes, and even though there are a few stand out tracks on this album it just doesn't seem as good as their debut, in my opinion. But I'm sure fans of The Yes Album would find some fantastic music to love here.