With Rick Wakeman on Keyboards and a Roger Dean cover, we’re now into Peak Yes territory.
My memory of this album was that it was a gatefold sleeve that told a story, but looking into it more closely it looks like I was remembering Yessongs, which actually continues the artwork from this album. Here, a micro-planet is breaking apart, with the pieces due to be towed elsewhere by a fish-shaped spaceship; on Yessongs we see the pieces coming to rest in the shallow sea of another world to create improbable mushroom-shapes islands. This album inspired me for a Spelljammer campaign (for D&D) at the time; that setting features fish-shaped fantasy space-going ships, and I named one in the campaign the Schindleria after a track on this album.
Although this was one that was doing the
rounds of my university friends, the only track I remembered was Heart Of The
Sunrise, and that only vaguely. Unlike Court Of The Crimson King, where pretty
much every note was familiar, most of this didn’t really jog any memories,
probably because Yes never quite gelled with me.
And, to be honest, they still don’t. I can
appreciate the musicianship, but this album didn’t reach deep into me the way
many others have. There are three lengthy tracks – Roundabout, South Side Of
The Sky, and Heart Of The Sunrise which do proggy things with musical motifs,
timing changes, and movements, a shorter track Long Distance Runaround, and four
relatively short solo pieces that are solo work from each band member. Rick Wakeman delivers a synth version of Brahms
with Cans And Brahms, which just feels like some indulgent twiddling (a sentiment
shared by Wakeman himself who just rattled something off to fulfill his part). John Anderson has a nice bit of overlaid vocals
like a choral round with We Have Heaven, Carl Bruford has a mercifully short drum/percussion piece with the 34-second long Five Percent For Nothing, and finally John Howe does his best John
Williams (guitarist, not composer) impression with a nice little Spanish
acoustic piece called Mood For A Day.
Heart Of The Sunrise is the best track, for
my money. My memory of it was of a good tune broken up by the usual prog-rock
indulgent breaks, but listening to it again it hangs together a lot better than I remember. As
with a lot of prog-rock, though, the album walks the wafer-thin line between
innovative and intelligently constructed composition, and self-indulgent
pretentious twaddle.
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