Yes, the post-Jon Anderson Years: The Opposite of a Sophomore Slump

I remember hearing about Chris Squire's death in June of 2015. Rather unexpectedly, it hit me like a ton of bricks. No doubt my brother's death a couple months previously left me vulnerable, in a state of sadness and so Squire's passing was the second of a real 1-2 combo to the gut that left me reeling. 

I remember hearing about this album's release in the summer of 2021. It had been seven years since its rather milquetoast predecessor had come out and I was beginning to wonder if Yes was done. Luckily they were not. At the time, if memory serves, the Covid lockdowns were winding down and life had taken on some semblances of normality. A new Yes album seemed like something of a treat for having survived not only Covid but the lockdowns too.

The album's cover was another doozy from Roger Dean. Rock formations as far as the eye can see with the title in something like Dwarvish runic script and the Yes logo rendered as a gorgeous bit of stained glass with a red bird inside. Looking at these fantastic covers, I have begun to miss listening to Yes albums on vinyl with the large renderings of the art and a sheet of lyrics & credits. Listening to Tales From Topographic Oceans was totally other than else. Opening the gatefold was like cracking open a grimoire with all those photos in Deanian frames adorning the mysterious lyrics and their arcane mumbo jumbo. And you got to see the whole painting.

I used to buy albums based on the artwork! I cannot recall the last time I did so.

So they had the album cover down. A good start. But I had questions on my mind. First, what would Billy Sherwood bring to the Yes sound beyond a bass tone? Second, would they be able to produce music that wasn't so tepid and uninspiring as most of the stuff on Heaven & Earth?

Sherwood was Squire's handpicked successor. He was family as he'd been involved with Yes or its members since the late 80s or early 90s. He helped out on Union, was second guitarist on the Talk tour, and mixed the Keys to the Ascension stuff. He was like a utility player for the Yes farm team who finally got called up to the majors when he became a fully-fledged member in the late 90s. That stint ended and it would not be until Heaven & Earth that we'd hear from him again as he did engineering and mixing duties for that album.

I didn't know what Yes with Sherwood on bass would sound like but at least I was comfortable with the guy filling Squire's shoes. It's not like he was some unproven schmo; he had proven himself already as being a more than capable player.

And so I wasn't worried about Sherwood like I was worried about this being another silver platter of mid-tempo bloat. Plus Davison was still something an of unknown quantity. I had no idea if he was responsible for the mess that is Heaven & Earth. Still, I took comfort that he was still in the band and hadn't been run out of town with brickbats. That he possessed a striking voice was proven; but could he contribute some good music to sing to? Could the band for that matter?

Shortly after The Quest was announced, "The Ice Bridge" was released as the first single. I think most prog fans had ELP's "Fanfare for the Common Man" come to mind with the first note or two. A drum fill and it's off to the races with a strong and steady beat. Yes! I mean, whew! Sherwood's bass was both rhythmic and melodic just like his friend's playing though the sound here was Sherwood's own. The lyrics had taken on even further shades of Jon Anderson with opaque lines such as "All eyes to the east, in a vision...Snowflower elder, he has walked forest green". I take the lyrics to be a call for humanity to stop shitting where we eat.

The final two and a half minutes or so feature Howe and Downes trading licks over a propulsive beat with Sherwood throwing a few tricks of his own in too. Howe's rapid fire notes cede to Downes' own machine gun bursts and around they go. This is just fantastic stuff! Another song that should still be in live setlists.

The excitement of the opener did not last as "Dare To Know" slows things down. The orchestration makes its first appearance here and it seems to come out of left field. On the plus side, it transitions out well. Not a great song but not bad. The harmony vocals are nice, Downes gets in some fine organ licks, and an acoustic guitar makes for a lovely outro. "Minus the Man" hears Davison teaming up with the new guy. It opens with Sherwood sliding down the neck of his bass and he does some fine bassy noodling here by which I mean he adds a lot of low end color instead of just keeping a beat. Lyrically it's about technology supplanting humanity and surely must contain one of the first prog mentions of AI. The strings seem to have driven out Downes on this one.

Coming in at just over 8 minutes and in 3 sections, "Leave Well Alone" is something of a mini-epic credited to Howe alone. The opening section is called "Across the Border" and, although it begins with a few lone plucks of a koto, the song eventually wends its way into a weird, proggy kind of strut. Lyrics such as "Taste the virtue of nothingness/Feel the motion from elsewhere" should disabuse anyone thinking that Jon Anderson was the source of all spacey, Zen-like lyrics for the band back in the day. The middle bit, "Not for Nothing", has a very faint R&B flavor to it while the final section, "Wheels", felt more than a bit like a slowed down "Würm" giving Howe a chance to solo the song to its denouement. Also, Sherwood's bass is loud here. I like it.

"The Western Edge" is about half as long as "Leave Well Alone" yet it too feels like a mini-epic. A slow opening comes replete with some solo Sherwood vocals as well as harmonizing. White picks up the pace and Howe's steel guitar soars as strings-like keys fill in the background. Sherwood is great here creating tension as the song seeks release. The big, soaring ending is warm and familiar, like the Yes of old.

"Future Memories" opens with Davison on acoustic guitar and he creates a slightly ethereal, moderately dark feel. Howe adds steel guitar flourishes. The sentiments of "Through all of life's complexities/I often miss the scenery" are perhaps, not so much dark as regretful, uncertain. No drums here but we are treated to some very nice harmony vocals. "Music To My Ears" follows and begins with some gentle piano and hushed guitar. The verses are achingly beautiful and the organ splooshes work well next to the descending sounds of the guitar.

The album proper concludes with "A Living Island", another triptych. An acoustic guitar fanfare yields to an intimate sounding piano that accompanies Davison. "A world gone mad, on the last plane out we flew/There's no one with whom l'd rather brave the storm than you" sounded like it could have been on Fly From Here. The song picks up a bit once White's drums enter and Downes goes on a great little excursion on his Hammond. In the middle we get a dose of wordless vocal harmonizing a la "South Side of the Sky". With the final few verses the meaning of the lyrics becomes clear: they're about the Covid lockdowns and Davison honors the folks who could not work from home: "Here's to the frontline saviors" as well celebrates our shared determination to weather the storm: "We're in this together, though together apart in isolation".

Starting with this album, Yes would include bonus tracks of songs that didn't make the final cut. Here we get a trio beginning with "Sister Sleeping Soul" which is the best of the bunch. Howe is on his Portuguese 12 string guitar while Sherwood plays some interesting bits underneath. Great vocal harmonies and plenty of tasteful synth work from Downes. Some more lovely wordless vocal harmonies close things out. And when I say lovely, I mean really, really lovely.

"Mystery Tour" is a quaint three and a half minute chronicle of the history of The Beatles. Some nice playing but a little too twee. "Damaged World" is another plea for humanity to get its act together. Unfortunately, Howe's voice is not able to carry the homily alone. Some nice playing by Howe and his trusty steel guitar gives a vaguely country flavor while Downes treats us once more to some nice solos, but the song is saccharine rather than sincere to my ears.

Yes' sophomore effort with Davison is quite an improvement over Heaven & Earth. They stopped sounding like Bread trying to be clever and produced a wonderful album that had energy. The band sounds frisky yet willing to be delicate when needed. The lyrics are a nice mix of those that are open and direct and those that require a hierophant to comprehend their meaning. Sherwood is a fine replacement for Squire. He plays in the dearly departed bassist's style but is not a slavish imitator. He lovingly adds little melodic runs as Squire did but they sound like Sherwood.

"The Ice Bridge" and "The Western Edge" both join the pantheon of latter day Yes songs that should be in their setlists today. Somewhere on this blog I opined that Jethro Tull had enough great post-throat problems material to assemble setlists that focus on this period rather than treading the waters of Aqualung and straining Ian Anderson's voice yet again. Yes certainly has enough great post-Jon Anderson material to quit playing Fragile and Close to the Edge in their entireties and we've still got a couple more albums to go.

I get why these bands rely so heavily on the songs of their heydays - people my age and older who ignore/dismiss newer material. But it also deprives me and people like me who enjoy the Benoît David and Jon Davison eras of the pleasures of songs like "Into the Storm" and this:

A Salt & Vinegar Miscellany XXIV: Scratchings from Shropshire

If memory serves, I spied these on our second stop at The Butcher's Quarter in Manchester. They were next to the door and hidden away from my attention which was immediately drawn to the well-stocked display cases.

With a name like The Shropshire Scratching Company, I felt like a bit of an aristocrat snacking on these things. There's just something deightfully formal and non-punny about the name.

I knew there was something different about these scratchings, that they weren't the same as American pork rinds, upon picking up the bag. They had heft to them and, to paraphrase Professor Farnsworth, each 100g bag weighed over 1kg.

Just look at them! They are not these puffy, air-filled crispy things that I was used to here in the States. These are solid, hefty mini-slabs - more akin to the crackling of gas stations across the South. My samples were light brown with lots of dark spots on them. A white dust had been evenly applied. They smelled of pork fat along with a mild vinegar zip.

Biting into one of these, there's an initial crunch and then, once you're past that, there's a creamy, fatty inside. Kind of like a porcine version of a Tootsie Roll Pop. The salt level was fine while the tanginess was fair to middling. The ingredients list has no mention of vinegar, cider or otherwise, and the tangy zip here appears to be the product of Acid E330 which the interwebs say is citric acid. How do they get away with putting "cider vinegar" on the bag?

These were tasty even if mild on the acidic zip and it was neat to sample the culinary ways of a foreign country.

Who loves the sun?

Noir Willow

"When you’re bitten, you’ll take it and like it."

Yes, the post-Jon Anderson Years: A new Jon

Coming off essentially two albums of music that sounded fresh and exciting, Yes came out with this clunker. It's a real shame because Roger Dean was killing it with the album covers. I love the icy blue that dominates Heaven & Earth's cover with the mushroom cloud iceberg off in the distance standing in stark contrast to the evergreen branch in the foreground. Plus the YES logo has a lovely black and white southwestern (America, that is) look to it.

The big change here is that Benoît David has been replaced by Jon Davison who had been with the Volunteer State prog stalwarts Glass Hammer. I feel badly for David as Yes cast him as the Nikolai Yezhov of the group in 2018 when they released Fly from Here – Return Trip, their only album with him (at the time) reworked musically a bit but also with David's vocals replaced by Trevor Horn's. Ouch! He didn't seem deserving of such an insult and Fly from Here wasn't broken so why try to fix it?

It is difficult for me to separate the music on Heaven & Earth from the late summer of 2014 when I got a copy and spent hours on my front porch absorbing it and assessing the new singer. At the time my relationship with my significant other was at a nadir. She spent little time with me and was instead to be found at the tavern keeping a barstool warm. With a new Yes album something to celebrate, I spent much time on the porch with Heaven & Earth as my company. Oh, and our cats too.

Having divorced the aforementioned significant other earlier this year, the album has a certain bittersweet quality for me.

Beyond the turmoil in my life when I was introduced to Heaven & Earth the album is notable to me for the rather numerous songwriting credits that Davison gets here. He gets a writing or co-writing credit on every song save one. It impresses me that the other guys in the band were happy to consider what Davison had to offer and not only that, but to utilize his material.

The problem here, as the folks at Tabletop Genesis would say, is mid-tempo bloat. "Believe Again", which opens the album, is a prime example. Steve Howe opens the song with this echoey, gentle-on-the-attack guitar sound as Geoff Downes adds these staccato synth notes that have a strings-like tone. White sounds like he's playing the hi-hat while Squire's bass adds to the lumbering pulse. It all has a vague reggae lilt to it.

While I am unsure who wrote the lyrics here, Davison is in fine form and sounds wonderful as he sings words that are more Jon Anderson-like than any found on Fly From Here.

Is there a vision here
Woven to touch and all to capture light?
Surely the stream of consciousness
Flows to the sea

His voice is just beautiful. However, as the song builds and the chorus is upon us, the tempo hasn't moved. Davison's harmonizing with Squire and Howe is exquisite and White moves things along with some snare work but it's a shift in tone, not tempo. I like Howe's solo in the middle and the synth flourishes - there's even some drums like congas too - but the song plods along for most of its 8 minute duration. 

Everything sounds great here, the playing, the melodies, and especially the vocal harmonies but the song just never seems to find its feet. It feels half-baked, almost a demo. This is a problem that plagues the majority of the album and it saddens me that White's drumming is so lackluster here. 

There's some great piano on "The Game" and the vocal melody is gorgeous with bits having been rescued from "The Gift of Love" from back in 2010. Downes is in fine form but the song just seems to drag. The rhythm section never propels it along as White and Squire did so well on Fly From Here.

"To Ascend" has some lovely acoustic guitar and piano to complement an equally pretty vocal performance from Davison. It's a slower song by design and so when the drums enter, they genuinely transform things by going from gentle acoustic to something a bit bigger. Downes just impresses the heck out of me here with piano and string sounds and synths and more legato piano. A truly beautiful song.

"In a World of Our Own" just seems to plod along while "Light of the Ages" threatens to add excitement, but it never does. Downes orchestrates a tense, striking opening for "Subway Walls" but the drama peters out. However, the ending really picks up the pace and, as Howe solos, the song kicks into gear for the album's only true moment of excitement.

There are a couple songs here that I think transcend (haha!) the mid-tempo trap by virtue of being fairly simple, direct tunes that are just blatantly catchy.

The first is "Step Beyond", a Howe-Davison joint. It opens with this bouncy synth line that moves across the stereo field that should come across as being the cheesiest moment on the album but it somehow is just fun & catchy instead. Howe comes in and White sets a steady beat that may be mid-tempo but it somehow manages to take the lead in pushing ahead. I love the refrain of "Beyond" in the bridge and the return of the first verse after Howe's solo is just gorgeous. The harmony vocals are magical throughout with Squire on the top of his game.

The second song that stands out for me is Howe's "It Was All We Knew". It has a lazy summer feel to it which mirrors those summer evenings out on the porch listening to this album as my cats kept the neighborhood watch. Howe's playing is just so melodic and fun. Most, if not all of the vocals here are harmonized and the vocal melodies are just incredibly catchy. Somehow the chorus has this vague white proggy Caribbean lilt to it.

Listening to Heaven & Earth after Fly From Here is jarring. White's drumming is so tepid and restrained with none of the urgency that propelled "Into the Storm" or the previous album's title track. This goes a long way in explaining why these songs have an unfinished, demo-like quality. Roy Thomas Baker is the producer here and he also produced Yes' 1979 sessions in Paris before Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman left the band which sound boring in a similar way to the songs here.

This album's surfeit of great melodies is largely wasted as, while they stand on their own well, they are never given the chance to really gel with one another nor given a beat that truly brings them to life. Heaven & Earth would prove to be Squire's last album as he passed away about a year after its release and I think of his vocals here as a parting gift of sorts. I simply love them. The harmony vocals are strong and impassioned throughout the album and their beauty lingers in my ears despite the general flatness that pervades most of the songs here.

Jon Davison earns his pay on this album. His singing is great and he does his best to let his voice animate the songs even when they head down a dull path.

While Heaven & Earth is the pratfall of the post-Anderson era, I like it more than many fans as I first listened to it during a fraught time in my life when I was trying to take refuge in the aural company of an old friend. And so it took on an emotional attachment for me. But I do recognize its faults.

It would be 7 years until Yes released a follow-up.

Things get Grimm

Having seen the horror puppet show and Halloween having passed, it was time for some tales from the Brothers Grimm.

The show was at The Jarvis Square Theater in Rogers Park. I guess they've got a fair number of storefront theaters in Rogers Park as I was at The Factory Theater there just this past spring. They also like their murals there as I think that every viaduct we encountered had them.

We had a little time before the theater opened so we grabbed some tea at a nearby cafe outside of which was Thoreau's Corner.

Once we were able to get in, we had a few minutes to spend in the lobby before the doors to the theater itself were opened. I perused the artwork on the walls and found a print of The Yule Cat. The artist was listed at "brynn d" and I am left to wonder if the d was for Douglas or Daníelsson or who.

Ere long the doors opened and we took our seats to be transported to a bar somewhere, sometime...

The premise is that Jakob Grimm is seeking his brother Wilhelm having lost contact with him after the pair rescued Little Red Riding Cap from the big, bad wolf. Jakob traces him to a bar on the moon - or did he have to go through the moon to get there? Gah!

The bar is populated by characters from their fairy tales who are taking refuge there, including that Wolf who has the strange ability to mimic a granny. Jakob seeks revenge on Wolf but a truce, of sorts, is made and the denizens of the bar instead act out the Grimm's tales. "Snow White", "Little Red Riding Cap", and "The Golden Goose" are amongst the stories brought to life at the mysterious tavern.

There's a nice variety here with Jakob being the serious one, although he adds some droll humor to the proceedings, while the rest of the cast aim squarely for the funny bone most of the time. There are even short, yet delightful, musical interludes. It's been a long time since I've read one of the Grimm's tales so I cannot tell just how closely the script adhered to what the real Jakob and Wilhelm published but there were moments that stood out as never having been in a Disney retelling. For instance, the Queen in "Snow White" gets to wear the red hot shoes and dance to her death.

Towards the end the play took a turn towards the serious as Wilhelm is found, so to speak. The Wolf is revealed to be the revenant story collector. Jakob is stuck in a Groundhog Day-like scenario wherein he leaves the tavern only to forget the events that transpired there and is destined to return once more in search of his brother. Parting is such sweet sorrow indeed.

I found the tragedy of their fraternal bonds to be quite affecting and not every eye that left the theater was dry that evening, I can tell you.

 

A little rough around the edges, perhaps, but a really fun show with a meaningful ending. The actors all did a swell job and we found out that one of them was just a high school freshman. Good on her! 

Since we'd eaten Thai on the return trip the previous weekend we decided to have a Middle Eastern dinner at al Bawadi Grill in Niles. It wasn't very far out of our way from our route back to the interstate so it was perfect.

The ghazawi salad was tasty although I wouldn't have minded a bit more hot sauce. For my main it was chicken shawarma.

I thought the chicken was dry and underseasoned but the garlic sauce that came with it was quite tasty.

 

We get a weekend off before it's back to the big city for some Dante. Divine!

An exquisite corpse

To get into the Halloween spirit, my ladyfriend and I trekked down to Chicago a week or so before the big day to take in volume VI of Rough House Theater's House of the Exquisite Corpse: Lullabies.

It was a lovely day in Lincoln Park with many homes decorated for the season. It was much warmer than that weekend I spent there a couple January's ago when I walked about a mile to the Steppenwolf in the midst of a polar vortex that took the temps well below zero. We parked and made our way to the Athenian Room for a spot of lunch. Afterwards on our way to the Steppenwolf's side theater in the parking lot, we ambled down Willow Street which took us past the Willow Room.

Some great naming right there, I tell ya.

Inside the theater, there was this neat bit of art.

I am unsure if was in any way connected to the performance but with a trio of disembodied heads, it felt appropriate.

House of the Exquisite Corpse is a horror anthology puppet show featuring six short performances.

The theater had 6 mini-performance spaces and the audience walked from one to the next over the course of the show. These spaces had peep holes for us to peer into and watch each lullaby. Here's a photo I found on the interwebs that shows one group:

"Don't you want to live your dream?" featured a neat triple decker set and a flying bit of manna that the puppets "ate". "Jumping Jack Money" concerned, if I recall, an orphanage for the puppets that lined the walls and that we audience members could control. Inside a life-sized puppet fellow plotted for profit at the expense of the orphans. He came right up to my peephole giving his spiel and it was more than a little disconcerting. Who'd have thought a venture capitalist puppet could be so scary?

"The Moon is So Bright" features a boy dragged to the depths from a fishing boat. It managed to conjure a dream-like feeling very well. The singing was at once beautiful and haunting.

We both enjoyed House of the Exquisite Corpse greatly. It had moments of beauty such as when the drowned boy effortlessly glided through the depths alongside the eerie greed of one who would exploit orphans for financial gain. At least he got what was coming to him.

On our way home we learned that our beloved Zaab Thai in Elgin was not open so we made a detour in Rockford to eat at Thai Hut. Our server was quite friendly and the food was good, if not great.

I was amused that the label on the jar of chili in oil didn't tell the eater what it contained, merely that it was very hot.

Dining at the new Thai place, I pondered whether there was a way to monetize a social media something about the Thai restaurants of northern Illinois.

A fun venture and we'd be doing it all over again the next weekend.

Chili Season or Gotta Use Up Those Fresh Serranoes

I made chili today and I think it turned out fairly well.

I put in 3 fresh serranoes from the last harvest from my plant. My gut tells me I could have gotten away with another 1 or 2 just fine. Well, I have a couple fresh ones left and a bunch cryogenically frozen for stew makin' this winter. Jalapeños too.

Sounds from the north

Last weekend I returned to the Atwood Music Hall because Faroese music star Eivør had returned to Madison in support of her new album Tungl. Supporting her on tour was midori jaeger.

jaeger is a young lady from London who came armed with only her cello. Not a bow in sight, she plucked the strings to create melodies that were sometimes gentle, sometimes a bit more vigorous. It might have been during her intro to "dark green" when she noted that her mother was Japanese and her father American and that her childhood was spent in Japan as well as England. The song was about roots, planting them and uprooting them. Indeed, her recent EPs are called (Re)planted and (Un)planted.

I enjoyed her set. The songs usually had a steady beat and jaeger's lovely and, at times, ethereal voice was sensual and pleading. I should really check out her studio work. She seemed genuinely chuffed to be on stage before us and at the warm reception she was given.

It's a bit odd to me that Eivør has a devoted following here in Madison even if it's not a very large one.

Her blond hair in long pigtails and wearing a corset adorned with spikes, she came onstage to a rousing fanfare. Looking around, I think I saw a higher percentage of blonde women in the audience than at shows where the artist did not hail from near the Arctic Circle. The crowd was not all of a type but many of the guys down front looked a lot like the drummer - a bit burly and clad in black. To me, he looks like a guy from a biker gang in a Nordic noir TV show that turns out to have a heart of gold.

No doubt there were many folks there who just loved Eivør's dark synth pop but I also suspect that the Madison area's neo-pagans that follow a Norse path were out in full force that night.

Eivør and her band - a drummer and 2 keyboardists, one of them occasionally playing bass - play a darker toned music shaded by synths and adorned with her guitar that was usually adding a layer of fuzzy drone. There were a couple times where I was reminded of Nine Inch Nails but Eivør's music is generally less angry and feels more like she has a steely determination to make it through a long winter.

Her voice is incredible. Sometimes it is pulsing and trance-like while at others she really lets loose and sounds like she's calling down the ancestors.

The crowd got giddy with anticipation when they saw her pick up her Valkyrie drum.

Those songs had an added emphasis on rhythm that made the synths follow instead of the rhythm laying a foundation for the keys.

Just like her show last year, "Enn" was a highlight with the drummer pounding out a primal beat as throbbing synthesizer lines and washes of fuzzy guitar made it feel like they were ushering us across Bifröst. The tribal feel was mesmerizing.

Eivør and her bandmates put on another great show full of entrancing grooves and haunting melodies.

midori jaeger's set was captured in full and can be found up at Youtube. There are snippets of Eivør's performance there too.

Song of the day, Veterans Day 2026

It seems weird to wish someone a happy Veterans Day. Today I am thinking about my grandfather and great uncles who served in World War II. Some came back and got on with life well - more or less - while others turned to the bottle to forget what they had experienced.

Since the day was originally an observance of those who were in World War I, that'll be today's theme.

Mushroom light my way

The mushroom house down the street has this lovely shroom that lights up in their yard. There's something oddly comforting about a mushroom all aglow on my walk home from the bus platform after work during these months when daylight becomes an ever more precious commodity.

AMC fails, Marcus to the rescue

Last month I noted that I had seen a trailer for Once Upon a Time in Harlem at the AMC theater in Fitchburg. I remarked then that AMC had a reputation for tempting us with trailers for flix that never actually hit their screens and hoped that they made good on their promise of this documentary as it looks fascinating.

Not unexpectedly there's no trace of it on AMC's schedule but it's nice to see that it opens at Point tomorrow.

Yes, the post-Jon Anderson Years: Unfinished business

If Wikipedia is to be believed, Yes with Oliver Wakeman had not only brought Trevor Horn back for production duties but they had also decided to resurrect the old Buggles tune "We Can Fly From Here", a song Yes had worked on during the Drama period in 1980. To the best of my knowledge they recorded the song back then or at least demoed it. It became part of the live set on the Drama tour, at any rate.

So Horn returns to the fold as producer and suggests that the band turn "We Can Fly From Here" into a side long epic and do so with Geoff Downes behind the keyboards. And thusly a second member of the Wakeman clan departs Yes.

The resulting 24-minute piece of music was christened "Fly From Here" and it came in 6 parts including an overture which introduces us to the piece's themes as any good and proper overture does. Downes' playing here comes in more staccato bursts than Wakeman's did but he ably orchestrates a lush sonic tapestry including what sounds like a recorder/some kind of woodwind thrown in for good measure even if for only a few seconds. Howe gets some good licks in too. White and Squire give the opening some real oomph and make the first 2 minutes a kinetic burst of proggy energy.

Things slow down as part 1 begins. It's the "We Can Fly From Here" that fans are familiar with from the Drama era. David's singing is confident on the verses and simply lovely on the chorus as he more softly intones "And we can fly from here". This is a great song that really moves on the verses with a pulsing bass line and a steady beat that propels the song ahead. The gadarene rush to the sky is adorned with some wonderful harmony vocals all the while. The band still seem to be brimming with enthusiasm despite having already done an electric, fresh-sounding album and canned it.

"Sad Night at the Airfield" opens on a more gentle note as washes of synth adorn an acoustic guitar at the fore. Downes creates an ethereal backdrop for David as he sings "ghosts are in the empty corridors". Squire gets a solo in as does Howe with his pedal steel. This is a wonderfully moody song that picks up a bit at the end but never loses a melancholy feeling of loss. "Madman at the Screens" continues the moody feel amidst the return of Downes' staccato piano. White suddenly pounds out a hectic rhythm on the toms as if the storm that we were warned about earlier in the song has settled upon us. When it got going, I had vague flashbacks to "The Ancient/Giants Under the Sun" as White continued his thunder and Howe's slashing chords added dissonance underneath David's voice.

Until this point, "Fly From Here" had basically been Horn and Downes' baby. "Madman at the Screens" ends with a piano playing that song's main melody before ceding to a brief piece by Howe, the bouncy, upbeat "Bumpy Ride". The winsome interlude sounds quite out of place coming after the preceding 20 minutes which are much darker and dreamlike. But its playful melody has the saving grace of segueing quite effectively into the soaring chorus of the final section which is a reprise of the first.

"Fly From Here" is, I believe, the longest song Yes ever made. With an abundance of good melodies and great playing & singing all around, it works. I enjoyed the overall feel of the song which is darker than is customary for the group. Nothing despondent, mind you, but the imagery is of abandoned planes, an oncoming storm, and "formless memories lingering". The songs paints a shadowy world with ghosts seeming to hover at the edges. But the chorus of "And we can fly from here" is quite beautiful and provides hope of escape in the beginning and at its return during the finale.

"The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be", a holdover from the Wakeman sessions, makes for a nice come down from the epic title track with its poppy feel and more direct lyrics. "Life On a Film Set" is another reworking of a Buggles song dating back to the early 1980s. It begins with a darker feel like the album's title track but Howe turns things around with some jaunty strumming on acoustic guitar while Downes adds a jig-like synth line. The song's ending is marvelous with White's drums sounding thunderous while Howe's guitar takes on a menacing quality with some slashing chords.

"Hour of Need" is another tune from the Wakeman sessions that was kept on. "Solitaire" follows and is the first Howe solo acoustic piece to grace a Yes album since "Masquerade" on Union, methinks. It's quite gorgeous as it bounces from one section to the next with something vaguely country flavored a la Chet Atkins yielding to what I think of as being more classical guitar sounding.

"Into the Storm" closes out the album. I've written plenty about it already as it too is a refugee from the brief Oliver Wakeman era of the band. The version here is mostly the same as the one on From a Page and the liner notes credit Wakeman with keyboards here. Gone, however, is his exhilarating organ work with Howe and Squire coming to fore during those parts. Plus it sounds like Downes added some of his own synth licks and I certainly cannot blame him. Its reprise of the title track's "And we can fly from here" at the end makes for a satisfying resolution and now makes sense, if you will.

Considering the band had already made a great album with Oliver Wakeman, that they recorded another half an album plus of great music is testimony to just what a fertile period this was for the band. 40+ years in and Yes were still making vibrant, spirited music and had arguably regained some vitality that had been lost along the way as the band muddled through the late 90s. The Horn/Downes songs here have a different feel than the rest - as I've said already, they have a darker feel to them and Downes' playing includes a lot of manic staccato stabs of piano. Their stuff has a retro New Wave feel to it - some serious Drama vibes.

I've described a lot of the songs here as being energetic and, while I don't want to sound like a broken record, it's true. Alan White's drumming often propels these songs allowing Chris Squire to lay down some groovy melodic bass lines. There's a lot of dynamics here and I think that Benoît David's voice is outstanding. He is able to tread a fine line between sounding like Jon Anderson and Trevor Horn without slavishly imitating either.

While some of the material here dates back to 1980 or so, the album itself sounds fresh and vital. It does not sound like a bunch of prog rock pensioners - Benoît David excluded, of course, as he was only in his mid-40s when he recorded this album. I feel a bit ashamed at not having delved into this album upon its release in 2011. Better late than never.

 

I am tryin' to keep watch here!

Yes, the post-Jon Anderson Years: Not a Cape in Sight

I've been meaning to write about post-Jon Anderson Yes for a year or more now. At some point I gave their 2023 album Mirror to the Sky a listen and had a moment. Not quite a road to Damascus moment but I found myself becoming enthusiastic about latter day Yes. When I decided to buckle down and write about this era of the band they quite fortuitously re-released this EP which documents their first attempt at an album minus their longest serving singer and a founding member to boot with a slew of additional songs not on the initial 2019 release.

It's hard to keep up with all of the drama in this band (sorry), all of the bickering, and line-up changes. Here's what I've gleaned from Wikipedia and the official Yes site.

Going into 2008, the band was comprised of its "classic" line-up of Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman, and Alan White. An anniversary tour was being planned but Wakeman was advised not to do it for health reasons. And so he opted out but recommended a suitable replacement: his son Oliver. The rest of the band accepted and moved forward with touring plans. These, in turn, were cancelled when Anderson was beset by respiratory problems. Rather than waiting for him to heal, Benoît David, a Canadian singer in a Yes cover band, was recruited to fill his shoes.

A couple years of touring followed and this new Anderson-less Yes began recording a new album in March 2010. By that autumn, however, Wakeman was gone and Geoff Downes returned to the fold. From A Page is a collection of songs recorded during sessions with Oliver Wakeman filling his old man's shoes.

The initial 2019 release had 4 tracks on it: "To the Moment", "Words on a Page", "From the Turn of a Card", and "The Gift of Love". The 2026 version adds 4 more completed tracks plus a bunch of demos. The 4 additional songs that theoretically would have been on the final album had the band not pulled up stakes and gone running into the arms of The Buggles are: "The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be", "Into the Storm", "Hour of Need", and "Aliens". The first 3 were reworked for 2011's Fly From Here while the last ended up on Squire's collaboration with Steve Hackett, Squackett.

"To the Moment" kicks things off with some buzzsaw riffing from Steve Howe that reminds me of "Shock to the System" from Union/the 2nd Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe effort. Wakeman mirrors the riff on organ as Alan White comes in on drums. This Wakeman guy puts synths behind everything. The song slows down and some pulsing, wooshing sounds provide the backdrop for Benoit David's voice to enter. It's warm and in a high register like Jon Anderson's but is definitely distinctive. Squire's bass joins the fray playing the main riff.

The chorus is big and upbeat - "From the moment that the dream sets in...To the moment that you start to pierce the gloom". In classic Yes style we get 3 voices in harmony to complement the lead vocals. Howe's brief solo yields to Wakeman's 70s sounding synths and the song slows down once again for one final breather before it kicks in again and Wakeman is off to the races to take the song home.

What a wonderful tune! The guitar-keys interplay, the expansive harmony vocals, lyrics about dreams - this is archetypal Yes. It was as if there was a Spiritus Ita Est for the band that everyone had tapped into. As my introduction to the younger Wakeman, I have to say he sounds a lot like his old man with those synth sounds. Minimoog? ARP? The playing here feels purposeful and muscular. Everyone sounds in fine form and there's not a note wasted.

Squire's "The Man You Always Wanted Me To Be" comes next. While it's more of a poppy song, Howe contributes some wonderfully melodic playing and Wakeman fills out the sound with his army of electronics and some tasteful piano flourishes. Squire's voice sounds clear & expressive and his bass comes to fore near the end to provide a rhythmic foundation for Wakeman and Howe to solo. Plus Squire is joined by David and Howe and maybe even Wakeman for some vocal harmonies to close things out.

Piano opens "From the Turn of a Card" and remains the lone instrument. I presumed that this was Wakeman on lead vocals here but the internet is telling me that this is, in fact, David singing in a lower register. I don't believe it; this must be Wakeman. Regardless, the first vocal part where he's singing "Tell me what you would say, when things aren't going our way" had some Phil Collins vibes for me - think "Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart Away". The piano playing is majestic and the harmony vocals are wonderful.

"Into the Storm" is wonderfully retro nouveau Yes. It kicks off with a bang and there's those Moog (or ARP or whatever) sounds again. Howe plays his lead line in single notes with a padding of organ underneath. White keeps the song moving at a good clip and Squire's bass weaves in and out of what his bandmates are laying down with typical Squirely aplomb. His Rick sounds like it's all phased with that extra squishiness as on "On the Silent Wings of Freedom". Wakeman throws in some great piano as the full Yes harmony choir intones "Come on and make it now/Into the storm".

The band are hitting on all cylinders here and, for me, this is a grandchild of "Siberian Khatru". It brims over with energy and everyone's performance is full of confidence and an eagerness to help fill the sonic picture. Wakeman is a beast here with every keyboard at his disposal getting a workout. When the song hits its stride the organ plays some simple yet effective chords that help evoke driving down the highway with the top down or, at least, the windows rolled down. I can feel the wind in my hair. A bit of piano here and some fantastic synth that builds tension in the middle verses.

I absolutely adore this song. Listening to it is so much fun and it's a sin and a shame that it hasn't been played live on every tour since they recorded it. Crackling with proggy energy, this tune has everything Yes you could want: Howe's burst of guitar, waves of keys, the drive of 3 (or 4?) voices in harmony, big, squishy Rickenbacker, and a relentless beat.

The song goes out with David singing the refrain "And we can fly from here" so I presume the band were working on "We Can Fly From Here", the old Buggles tune that Yes had demoed long ago, before Wakeman's departure.

In "Aliens" human beings from the 41st century visit us here in the 21st. Another Squire tune, it sees his melodic bass runs accompanied mostly by piano with White's steady playing making the verses flow along with some added synth backdrop. The song builds up to a big final verse with some string-like synths giving a mild epic feel to the proceedings as White's fills punctuate Squires voice.

This song took a little time to grow on me but, at some point, I just became enchanted with Wakeman's piano and how it was enmeshed with the vocal melody. I knew the tune had wormed its way into my brain when I started singing it using the names of my sadly departed cats, Grabby and Piper.

Grab and Pipe are only cats from the future

I like to think that Squire would approve.

His playing on that instrument is marvelous throughout the album. Busy but never too busy, a grand melody here, a workmanlike fill there. The way he layers and builds his parts is simply fantastic. This song was played live many a time in 2008 which I think speaks to Squire's influence in the band but also to the beauty of the piece.

"Hour of Need" was written by Howe alone and it begins with him on his Portuguese 12-string guitar or laúd or whatever it is and it adds a totally different flavor. His playing is alternately gentle, pretty and then rhythmic & energetic. A lovely, hopeful song that pleads for us to address the problems of the world. I loved the synth work here which stood in contrast to the acoustic melody from Howe yet complemented it well.

Wakeman's majestic piano returns to the fore on "Words On a Page" where it's joined by some lovely acoustic guitar. White's drumming here is appropriately restrained - are those brushes? - and, while Squire isn't doing any of his trademark bass gymnastics here, his playing too is melodic and bolsters an arrangement that sounds deceptively sparse initially but whose lushness and fullness are revealed upon repeated listenings.

Considering that Wakeman is listed as the sole songwriter here, Howe sure gets in some generous soloing on electric guitar and, methinks, pedal steel, that really lifts the song and adds something dramatic to it, something a little more muscular. The orchestrated vocal parts in the last minute or so of the song as what sounds like pedal steel plays these soaring, heavenly notes are just magical.

The album closes with a nearly 10-minute track, "The Gift of Love". An orchestra of Moogy sounds usher us into this slow burning epic with White providing a leisurely beat before Howe's lovely notes enter and the songs picks up. Wakeman and Howe share melodic and soloing duties. There are also some gorgeous harmony vocal parts. At one point, I heard a familiar melody and, after pondering it for a bit, realized that it was used a couple albums later on Heaven & Earth in "The Game".

"The Gift of Love" is a very nice song. The playing is strong throughout, it has some great vocal harmonies, Wakeman's army of synthesizers is impressive as ever, and Howe does what he does and does it very well. I like this song but wish it had a little more variation in tempo. It's little too mid-tempo for a 10-minute piece.

From A Page goes to show that Yes were anything but a spent force creatively back in 2009-2010. This album was my introduction to Oliver Wakeman's playing and I am besotted by every ivory he tickles, every synth note that sounds like the future circa 1972. His tonal palette is pure classic prog so these songs have a retro feel to them but the writing and playing are so good that the listener cannot complain. Wakeman left me infatuated with his piano playing whether it was in lead such as with "Aliens" or one of an array of keys such as in "To the Moment". I love how he sometimes takes an everything including the kitchen sink approach to orchestrating his parts but never does his playing feel in excess, the songs are never bloated with keyboards.

Benoît David is no mere Jon Anderson imitator. He's in the same general range but his singing is more direct to my ears. Each line seems discreet whereas Anderson would have words bleed into one another. The lyrics are more direct too with none of the playful word choice merely for the sound present here. David's voice can soar when soaring is what's needed too.

This is a fantastic album to my ears and "Into the Storm" is a stone cold classic. It has so much energy and such a propulsive rhythm - White and Squire are in perfect synch here - and it really puts the rock in progressive rock. The song just cooks!

Truly, this album feels ebullient, the band kinetic. Sadly it was shelved.

Song of the day, 10 November 2026

This song goes out to the person whose comment here a couple days back was a Jack Torrence-like blast of "I want to d1e" over and over and over again.

Sunning

Cleanliness is next to godliness

Autumn colors are fleeting

I didn't get out this autumn nearly enough and so I have fairly few photographs of the lovely colors.

The shrining

The Día de los Muertos shrine at El Sabor de Puebla on the northside is beautiful. Look at all those dried marigolds. Just lovely.

Tasting the UP and other comestibles

My ladyfriend and I paid a visit to Prost! and the will testify that the schnitzel was delicious.

I always leave that place having eaten about 4 pounds of cucumbers.

Hunger pains had me rummaging through the refrigerator the other day and I found one last pie shell so I made a quiche with some ghost pepper cheese.

I have busted open my stash of thimbleberry jam.

It was delicious. A bit more tart than your usual raspberry stuff and was mighty fine on the bread that I baked on Friday.

Cran-beek, as a friend calls it

It's nice to have Cran-bic back. This is one of my favorite fall seasonal beers along with Lakefront's Pumpkin Lager. Since Wisconsin leads the nation in cranberry production, it is a true Wisconsin brew. I love its mix of sour and tart and fruity and malty and it's just tastilicious!

What are you lookin' at, hooman?

Haunches & tummerz