Prog Rock Saturday: The Yes Album

Yes - "The Yes Album" (1971) - Atlantic Records

Hello Friends,

We're picking up where we left off last summer tonight on Vinyl in the Valley.  Prog Rock Saturdays are back (finally!) and the drinks are flowing, the grill is smoldering, the mosquitoes are biting and we've got Yes on the turntable!

The Yes Album is the group's third album, the first with guitarist Steve Howe and the last with keyboardist Tony Kaye (for now!)  The album is widely regarded as their coming out album with longer songs with more complex instrumentation and strange, mystical lyrics that sound like they've been lifted off the pages of science fiction stories by Robert Heinlein, Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke.

At 9 minutes and 36 seconds the anthemic, "Yours Is No Disgrace" kicks the album off.  Complex bass & drum lines (courtesy of Chris Squire & Bill Bruford) square off against big-sounding organ tremors while Howe's guitar noodles in and out of the melodies all the while Jon Anderson's elfin vocals holding things together (... on a sailing ship to nowhere...) through various time signatures and changes of direction.  The stage is set for what Yes the band would sound like for the duration of the Seventies as well as laying the groundwork for pretty much everything ever done by Rush.

Steve Howe's fingerpicking guitar solo, "The Clap" is next.  Kind of a hoe down feel to this.  Its pretty impressive, to say the least, but I'd like to think its actually written about "the clap" (aka gonorrhea).  Howe has said he wrote it for the birth of his son.  

Side One ends with the amazing three-part mini-suite, "Starship Trooper" which culminates in the climatic three-chord instrumental cadenza of "Würm".  Nothing short of epic!

Side Two begins with the familiar and FM radio friendly, "I've Seen All Good People", the first part of which ("Your Move") was released as a single and features some very folksy acoustic guitar work with lyrics vaguely describing a chess match (...don't surround yourself with yourself, move on back two squares...)  With the help of headphones or decent speakers you can make out the chorus of John Lennon's "Give Peach A Chance" buried in the harmonies towards the song's end.

Jon Anderson's "A Venture" is up next and it kinda sucks.  It would have probably worked better as part of a larger piece and as Tiki T. points out, it sounds like bad Supertramp.

The album concludes with the 9 minute loud-quiet-loud "Perpetual Change" which could be about world politics, time travel, drug use, all three, or perhaps, none of the above.  Who cares?  If you're turning to Yes for deep lyrical insight into say, The Vietnam War, concerns about the environment or the meaning of life, you've got bigger problems to deal with.  

Take it for what it is, virtuosic and strange music with themes and characters out of the the furthest reaches of our imaginations.  Now, Starship Trooper, go on sailing by!

RATING: 4.5 Long Winters Longer than Time Can Remember out 5