Album title: Relayer
Year: 1974
Personnel: Jon Anderson (Vocals, acoustic guitar, piccolo, percussion), Chris Squire (bass), Patrick Moraz (Hammond organ, pianos, MiniMoog, Mellotron), Alan White (Drums, percussion), Steve Howe (Guitars, electric sitar, pedal steel)
Track by track:
“The Gates of Delirium”
What I like about this: The end section mostly
What I don’t like about this: Confused, sort of “tune-up” opening, overall quite boring I find
“Sound Chaser”
What I like about this: Has, at times, a decent flow. Nice singing.
What I don’t like about this: Too experimental/disjointed; see also under jazz fusion
“To Be Over”
What I like about this: Very relaxed and gentle, a good closer
What I don’t like about this: Nothing really
Bonus Tracks
“Soon”
What I like about this: Everything
What I don’t like about this: It’s part of the closing section of “The Gates of Delirium”, innit?
Comments: I’m not surprised at all, but I am rather disappointed that again I’m presented with an album of three tracks. My track (hah!) record with Yes on this has not been good; any time I can handle early seventies Yes it’s been on the somewhat shorter tracks, so I don’t hold out a whole lot of hope for this. It’s also unfortunate - though of course I knew this - that Wakeman is gone, replaced by Patrick Moraz, of whom I know nothing. I have a vague recollection of his being involved in some disco hit? Maybe that was someone else. Can’t see anything about it, and now it says he was involved with the Moody Blues, so yeah, maybe I’m confusing him with someone else. Either way I’m sad to see Wakeman go, as for me, other than Anderson’s distinctive vocal, his keys were what made Yes.
You have to love the cover though, which for me follows on a little from the previous behemoth. Reviews for the album seem to be mostly complimentary, whereas they had a lot of bad things to say about
Tales from Topographic Oceans, so it will be interesting to see how this goes. It kicks off with the epic, and it is an epic: twenty-three minutes of “The Gates of Delirium”, not even broken up into sections, so you can’t call it a suite, but one long unbroken piece of music. Good thing or bad thing? Well I must say it sounds a little like the band tuning up as it opens, and it’s really about two minutes before it settles down into anything cohesive, and when it does it is again on mostly Steve Howe’s guitar and of course Anderson’s vocals that it finds its shape. I can’t say I notice much of the new guy’s work yet, but there are still nearly twenty minutes to go.
Yeah. Twenty boring minutes.
Again, the old problem. I really couldn’t care about this and my attention is wandering, especially as I read about the album on Wiki. It’s just not holding my interest, and now we’re into a bouncing, uptempo section about halfway through, which I guess, from what I read, is the “charge” section of the piece, and there’s of course some great musicianship in it, but I just can’t make myself care. At least I can hear Moraz’s keyboard parts now, but to be honest, for me, they’re not a patch on Wakeman, who used to take over the melody when he was required to. It’s kind of another long jam, as I find - probably incorrectly, but certainly to me - most of the longer Yes pieces are. Y is for Yawn.
Sixteen minutes in then and it’s slowed down (aftermath of the battle?) on a humming keyboard line with some squeaky lines that could very well be on slide guitar or keys, I don’t know, and I don’t much care. Does remind me though of later Pink Floyd, especially on
The Division Bell. Seems an age since we’ve heard Anderson sing, and it is. Now he comes in with the soft and soulful ending, which is nice, but there’s no way this track would ever grow on me. I’m just too bored with and uninterested in it. Dare I retitle it “The Gates of Tedium”? Oh, you know I do. I see my friends Pendragon robbed part of the closing melody, something I have accused them of doing with a few other well-known bands, including Floyd, Supertramp and Genesis. Not that you care about that.
So that’s the big epic over, but Yes being Yes, the two remaining tracks can also be classed as epics, or perhaps mini-epics, over nine minutes each. To my delight (!) “Sound Chaser” turns out to be a jazz fusion jam that just sets my teeth on edge for nine minutes and twenty-five seconds, almost an abstract expression of musical ideas. Oh well wait now, was I too quick to judge? Maybe. Meh, you know, it’s not that bad: Anderson sings like an angel as usual, and there’s to me more cohesion to this at times than there was to the previous track, but it does tend to degenerate (sorry) into what sounds to my untrained ear musical chaos too often. I will give it this: it’s holding my attention, which the other piece did not. I still wouldn’t sing or hum it, or even remember it, but I’m not drifting away from it in boredom as I did with “The Gates of Delirium”.
And that leaves us with one track, as “To Be Over” closes out the album with another nine-minuter, which has a nice relaxed feel to it, almost the calm after the storm if you will. A nice gentle instrumental intro on which I think I detect use of this electric sitar Howe is shown as playing, then the vocal is low-key and sedate. I read the song was written after experiencing a boat ride down the Serpentine River, and that certainly shows in the relaxed, almost drifting style of the music. There’s one bonus track, which is “Soon”, and I must say it’s really nice, kind of reminds me a little of “Holy Lamb” off
Big Generator. Isn’t it though using parts of the closing melody from “The Gates of Delirium”?
Rating: 5/10
Yes or No? No
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quPoq2699Xo