Last few clips I've seen of Steve you could tell he was struggling to keep up with his old frantic self.

Recently saw a clip where during a sound check he completely went off on a spot dude who was missing his mark. No yelling, just really demeaning stuff in that snobby British way. Lost a ton of respect for one of my top 5 fiddle heroes that day. :(

80s Yes. I'm in a big minority in liking the 2nd album by that lineup better than 90210.

Yeah that's an old clip, I saw it years ago, he definitely comes off as a douche but apparently he always had a reputation of being the cranky one of the group.

Jon on the other hand always seems like the chillest guy.

90210!!! :rofl: Oh that's classic!
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...2NTI@._V1_.jpg
I'm also a Big Generator guy - first Yes album I heard and started my interest in them, which quickly faded as I travelled backwards in time.

For me (unpopular I guess but hell it's me)
Big Generator
ABWH (shut up it is)
90125
Union
The Ladder

That is all.

Love this album!

80s Yes is fine if I pretend it's a totally different project and don't compare it to the 70s albums. I think I read once that 90125 was originally meant to be released under a different name, which makes a lot of sense.

Post-80s Yes has its moments, but I'm never going to be super excited about listening to it.

90125 is a great pop album that only gets the flack it does because it's from Yes, I've always stood by that.

It's funny though that they brought Tony Kaye back, he originally left the band because he didn't want to use synthesizers, only for him to return when their music was at it's synthiest, I think he only played piano and organ which wasn't as prominent in the band's sound as it used to be, Trevor Rabin plays most of the synths on 90125 and Big Generator, he practically took over as the band's leader.

Trevor Horn really was the unofficial sixth member of the band at that point, 90125 was his baby and he co-wrote the two biggest hits. I love Horn's over the top production style, his stuff is overproduced in all the right ways.

Was going to be Cinema until Anderson agreed to join in.

All I know is both 90215 and Big Generator are miles better than the garbage Tormato and Drama. Listened to both recently for the first time in years - TERRIBLE.

:finger::finger::finger:

Dude what? Drama is great. It's Yes + Buggles, what's not to love?

As for Tormato, it's their worst 70s album without question. I almost never listen to it, but it's not all bad, it has Onward on it and I'm a huge sucker for their sappy ballads I must confess.

And I can't bring myself to hate Don't Kill the Whale. It's a guilty pleasure, a glorious absurd disco-prog environmentalist protest song with the funniest synth solo I've ever heard.

I love Drama, it’s actually probably my fourth favorite after CTTE, Yes Album and Relayer. Tormato I’m less jazzed about but I do like most of it, even Circus of Heaven can be a fun little singalong if I’m in the mood.

Same. Drama is a masterpiece and a testament to Howe, Squire, and Whites abilities as musicians, as they were out of their core element. Machine Messiah and Tempus Fugit are two of my favorite Yessongs.

Yes is coming out with a new album in May. They released this video for one of the songs a couple days ago.



It's OK I guess. Like a lot of legacy bands, their newer stuff sounds sort of like overly-processed, generic versions of their older stuff.

Is it just Steve Howe remaining from the classic lineup now? I heard some of the last album and I thought it was pretty boring. But I haven’t really enjoyed a Yes album on that gut level since Drama. There’s some later stuff that has parts that are kinda dope but even those feel like hollow mimics of their better days.

That's so weak it's almost not there. Went in one ear and out the other. Vapid.

Man this sounds so phoned in it's sad, no hooks and way overproduced. Yes without Anderson is a hard sell for me but Yes without Anderson AND Squire? This isn't Yes anymore. Sherwood is no Squire though he's trying I guess, and say what you will about Anderson as a lyricist he sure as hell can do better than this, these lyrics sound like a sh*tty poem some kid made after listening to a Neil Degrasse Tyson podcast. I do dig Howe's little guitar solo around the 3 minute mark but even he barely makes much of a presence here.

If Yes are just gonna be a glorified cover band from now on I dunno why they even bother making new songs.

At least the Roger Dean artwork is neat, as usual.

I pretty much agree with the opinions of you guys, and while the toned-down Yes-type music was playing, I focussed on the lyrics. They start out as a tolerable pastiche of J Anderson on earlier albums. To me their structure suggests Siberian Khatru (Outboard, river/Bluetail, tailfly) with a little nod to Roundabout in the choice of the word "walkabout" :-
But then the words slide off into very sub-Anderson lines like:-

The singer doesn't match the power or impact of Anderson, though, and neither does the music, which in a similar way gives the impression of a group pouring over albums from 50 years ago and trying to come up with something similar. One thing they missed out, however, was the beautiful quiet bits that I love in the real Yes albums - instead the music here just keeps pushing along in its undramatic way: breathless and yet failing to escape that constrained sound which I think is the result of the over-production that some of you have mentioned. Very disappointing.

That zero-G line is cringe indeed.

A big part of what makes Yes so great is how dynamic their music is and I'm just not hearing any of that in this new stuff.

Yep, absolutely agree on both counts, Queen Boo. This latest song is also lacking any of those spectacular synth moments that Rick Wakeman used to add to the mix.

While we're on the subject, I've honestly always loved Anderson's mystical mumbo jumbo lyrics. It adds a lot to making their music feel otherworldly and whenever he tried to be more concrete and traditional in his lyrics I felt it wasn't as compelling.

Yes, a lot of people dismiss his lyrics as pretentious nonsense, and they are a little difficult to defend, especially after JA admitted that he chose words for their sound, not their meaning. But yeah, he comes up with some great unusual combinations of words, and in the end I think they add to the music's longevity, simply because you'll never really understand what the songs are about.
"How can the wind with its arms all around me?" "Move over glory to sons of old fighters past" Great stuff!

I agree, I feel like Anderson's attempts at being more coherent usually results in his worst lyrics. :laughing:

I honestly really like that approach, plenty of other lyricists do something similar. Damo Sazuki, Mark E. Smith, Kurt Cobain, Beck and Thom Yorke all come to mind.

I didn't know that all those guys did something similar; the only singer there that I'm properly familiar with is Damo Sazuki, whose style I really like. I've listened to a fair amount of Can and almost never have a clue what he's singing: what language, or if he is using words at all.