FLY FROM HERE

For the second time in their history Jon Anderson is not in a Yes studio album, and for many fans the band is not the same without him as one of the composers and of course as their lead singer. The band has been criticized very much since Anderson had to leave the band in 2008, because this time there were serious health problems that didn´t allow Anderson to do long tours with Yes anymore, and the band chose to continue without him, replacing him first with Benoit David (who sings in this album) and later (curiously due to health reasons by Benoit David himself) by Jon Davison. Before Anderson left the band, Rick Wakeman, for health reasons too and advised by his Doctors, left the band, also because he can´t do long tours too, as Yes wants and maybe needs to do mainly for financial reasons, and he suggested his son Oliver to join Yes as their keyboard player, a thing that he did for some time. Chris Squire and Steve Howe in interviews said that they waited 4 years for Anderson´s health to fully recover, but unfortunately for Anderson before their planned 40th Anniversary tour he had serious health problems and finally he had to leave the band. I understand that they need to work to survive and that they need to have members who are healthy enough to tour. But Squire himself some 3 years ago also had health problems which forced the band to cancel some tour dates. Anyway, Yes has to continue working as a band for tours and albums, maybe more for financial reasons than anything else, in my opinion, not matter what some fans might think about it. So, the fans have the choice: to still follow Yes as a band, or not. Of course, I think that without Anderson the band is not the same anymore, the same as ABWH didn´t sound totally as Yes without Squire. While working together they sounded fully as Yes, musically and lyrically Anderson and Squire separately don´t have the same vision and sound for the band, even if some elements are common to their individual styles as musicians. "Drama" was a very good album, having elements from both The Buggles (Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn, who in 1980 respectively replaced Wakeman and Anderson ) and Yes (contributed more by Squire, Howe and White). But the Yes´sound was the dominating factor in that album, which sounds more Progressive in style. For this "Fly from Here" album, it seems that Squire and Trevor Horn thought that they still had some unfinished business from the "Drama" album days, and they "resurrected" an old song which only was played on tour by the band in 1980, called "We Can Fly From Here", composed by Horn and Downes. Initially the plan included Oliver Wakeman in the recording of the album, but maybe Squire and Horn thought that it was a better business and musical idea to bring Downes to the line-up again (with Oliver still appearing a bit in the album), which more or less was a reunion of the 1980 line-up, because Horn now acted only as a producer and songwriter contributor (althought he also contributes some keyboard and vocal things to the album), leaving the lead vocal parts to Benoit David, who is a very good singer, in my opinion, but as Davison and Horn, he doesn´t sound as Anderson enough to identify Yes as Yes only for the sound of their lead singer. The "We Can Fly From Here" song was expanded with several parts with contributions by Squire and Howe to make it a long Yes song of more of twenty minutes in length. The song sounds very well. And this song and the others in the album (2 by Howe and one by Squire) are good songs, very well played, arranged and recorded, but the predominant sound of the album is like an updated version of the sound of The Buggles combined with Squire and Howe´s vision and sound of how is the Yes´ sound, or at least, their Yes´ sound. Of course, Alan White is a very good drummer, but he only received (like Oliver Wakeman) one songwriting credit in this album. So, in conclusion, this album is very good, very professional in sound and arrangements, with a very good production work from Horn, but it is not one of my favourites from Yes, because it is not a very Yes´ album at least in a full musical style.