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What a difference a guitar player makes. Well, I have no idea how much
Steve Howe contributed to the change of style on this album (though you
get the idea the rest of the band thought quite a bit of him, what with
giving him his own solo piece) but this, for all intents and purposes, may
as well be the Yes debut album. The title does suggest that the rest of
the band thought of it as a kind of starting-over. This isn't quite the
"classic" Yes lineup -- Rick Wakeman had yet to join the band --
but I have always thought that Yes lost nothing by having Tony Kaye man
the organs. His approach is more soulful and more rock-based than
Wakeman's and it complements the music on this album to a greater degree
than Wakeman's stiffer, more intricate style. I consider this the first
"real" progressive rock album by Yes and I still firmly believe
that they've never made a better record (though certainly Close To The
Edge is just as great). Gone are the strings - the band are now a
confident, tightly-wound unit with an impressive amount of sonic depth in
their own right. The music is complex but always joyously tuneful. The
quick passages swoosh with a powerful intensity; the calmer sections are
delicate but still pulse with stores of unspent energy. Much of the album
has the character of a musical eruption, either happening or on the
precipice thereof. The composition and performances have the
sophistication of a very mature band at the height of their powers, yet
there is a youthful spirit in evidence here that is not audible to me on
subsequent releases.
More than any other good Yes album, this one is heavily riff-based; in
fact, it contains most of the best riffs that Yes would ever write.
Whereas Yes would develop compositionally to move away from the rock-based
riff, they're out in abundance on The Yes Album. Then there are the
lyrics. Although I normally find Jon Anderson's lyrics ubiquitous at best
and highly irritating at worst, for some reason they don't bother me at
all on this album. In fact, this is about as close to a lyrically-pleasing
album that I've ever heard Anderson pen. Less obtuse and random than what
would come later, the songs here are imagistic but for whatever reason
they don't strike me as self-indulgent gobbledegook - the music is so
fresh-sounding that buying into whatever Anderson is selling seems
effortless. The music on The Yes Album is timeless, yet the album is very
much a product of its era. The innocence of this record and the band's
"anything is possible" convictions imbues these wonderful songs
with a positive, organic vibe that places it squarely in the
post-psychedelic late '60s/early '70s. Yes would go on to make more
challenging and complex music on later releases, but to my ears they never
made another album where the words and the music worked together as
successfully. |
