While Yes' 2014 album Heaven & Earth will never be held in the same regard as the likes of Fragile or Going For the One, I think it is better than it's usually given credit for. Despite the frozen landscape of the album's cover, it was released in July (its 8th anniversary was just a couple days ago) and I think that I shall forever hear the lazy, hazy days of summer in its music. The songs have an easy going, West Coast feel to them.
Some may scoff at the man taking Jon Anderson's spot (or was he Benoît David's replacement?), Jon Davison, but he has a beautiful voice and he certainly brings on the New Age, hippie vibes. When I saw Yes in concert here in Madison just a few days after the release of Heaven & Earth, I felt Davison came across as a bit more down to earth than his legendary predecessor and just thrilled to be fronting a band that he surely grew up listening to. He did a fine job on the older material which made up the bulk of the set as older bands seem to have little to no confidence in their new songs these days.
Heaven & Earth's main failing, to my ears, is the drumming. Alan White (R.I.P.) generally kept everything at an often times enjoyable but ultimately monotonous mid-tempo. It's hard to believe that this was the same guy who maniacally propelled songs like "Ritual" and "Sound Chaser" forward as if they were primitive rites upon which the band members lives depended on. And it was his bass drum lick that made "Shoot High Aim Low" such a memorable piece of neo-Yes. Most of the songs on Heaven & Earth have a demo-like quality to them in that White's beats seem like placeholders and that the band just ran out of time to replace them with the real drum parts.
Having said this, Yes managed to eek out at least a couple great songs on Heaven & Earth and one of those is "Step Beyond". While it's not one of the songs that veers towards the band's proggy past, it does have some Yes trademarks as well as the virtue of being incredibly catchy. It was written by Steve Howe and Jon Davison but I don't know if there was a strict division between writing the music and the lyrics or not.
It begins with a springy synth line from Geoff Downes that bounces from channel to channel and sounds really neat on headphones. A couple hits on the snare and the rest of the band come in. Howe's guitar introduces the melody Davison uses for his vocals. The lyrics feel very much like those of old - "If I don't let go/I'd never know/The joy freedom brings" - but are more direct. Davison doesn't seem to throw in words strictly because of their sonorous qualities as Anderson did.
While I do wish White's playing was more dynamic, Howe's guitar work is tasteful and melodic and he and Chris Squire (R.I.P.) team up with Davison for those trademark Yes vocal harmonies that make the second half of the song such a joy. And it is always a pleasure to hear Squire's bass step away from rhythm duties and play its own melody.
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