YES
Fragile
(Atlantic)
. . . soul-satisfyingly heavy and vitally original. . .
Yes, a compound of killer eclecticism and sophisticated high energy, float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Not a soul-rock jazz-blues-bop fusion, but an authentically crazy and commercial English pop act, they are both soul-satisfyingly heavy and vitally original. Highly produced (by Eddy Offord) with tight clean vocals, they combine the technological craftsmanship of Emerson, Lake & Palmer with the cosmological sexuality of Pink Floyd. Abstractly conceptual, yet easy to flow with, brilliantly electronic yet warmly human, they have released three imaginative and unselfconsciously ambitious albums, as well as a semi-hit single, "Your Move," that cut across both the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young without sounding derivative. They would seem to be the Next Big Thing From England, which is just about all right with me, given their stunning follow-up to The Yes Album with this finely wrought collection called Fragile.
Including, first if not necessarily foremost, their new single "Roundabout" in a long and winding version, Fragile is an album about travel, about mountains and the sunrise, warm, cold, and distance, waves, and sky, being lost and being absorbed. In earlier songs, Yes have been starship troopers and life seekers undergoing perpetual change, and their special kind of pretention has always come with their best and most convincing music. Yes are the aspect of the Who that discovered Rael and Armenian and the Amazing Journey, but if the group has assimilated the pure free energy that surges from "I Can See For Miles," they are at the same time more "natural," consistently apolitical, and with their influences seeming almost exclusively from the sixties, they are a young band who has found their style and their audience in the seventies.
What distinguishes Yes from other modern money makers like ELP is that they need no reference point external to their own music like "Tarkus" or "the classics." Rick Wakeman, the keyboard virtuoso they acquired from the Strawbs, has a facility and a force of expression that invites comparison with Keith Emerson, but even on a transcription of a classical theme like "Cans and Brahms," Wakeman impresses us the more in the context of an entire album, which for the most part is solid, fluid, and fluent rock.
Although the production of Fragile stresses individual performances within the framework of a song, and there is less unison playing than formerly, it is hard to tell exactly how the album's highlights like "Long Distance Runaround" or "Heart of the Sunrise" differ from earlier original compositions. Outstanding as always are Jon Anderson's lead vocals and Steve Howe's lead guitar, but with so many kinds of musical expression at their disposal, Yes constantly shift the relative importance of each member from segment to- segment, song to song. While the quality of the musicianship is at once apparent, this album in particular may require several listenings for one to encompass the entire development of each number and follow it with familiarity.
With two crucial personnel changes behind them and a large following in England, Yes have already established themselves as AM contenders here and impressed even complete strangers on an intense tour of the U.S. last summer. Recorded a year after The Yes Album, Fragile would have been a best-seller from that momentum alone. The group seems to be clinching its incipient stardom with their deliberate structuring, their beautiful sense of proportion, and an appealingly fancy layout for their art work. They return to this country in February to record a live album, which with their dazzling studio work is exactly the move to make to convince one and all of their sensitivity to every medium and style of rock. Fresh, careful, and multi-talented, Yes are an affirmation of what is always around the comer and waiting to be heard in pop, and just in time, too.
Ron Ross
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