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JUNE 19, 1975
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Source: Rolling Stone
Review: Relayer & Yesterdays
By Ken Barnes
With their last five albums (including Relayer) reaching Top Five status,
Yes are central to the new British Invasion. They combine complex,
extended instrumental passages with weighty, quasi-mystical lyrics. The
group is far removed from the monolithic theatrics of ELP or the cynical
conundrums of Jethro Tull and much more deeply into the mystic than the
mellowed mind balm of the Moody Blues.
At first Yes redressed mid-Sixties tunes in progressive rock trappings,
along with elaborate but still melodic compositions of their own. By their
third and fourth albums (The Yes Album and Fragile), the cover versions had
vanished and the originals lengthened.
Yesterdays serves as an illustration of the band's earlier phase. It
consists of two tracks from their first album and four from their second,
plus an obscure B-side to a 1970 single and a ten-minute version of Paul
Simon's "America" (previously available only on a British sampler album
and, in a considerably shortened version, as a 1972 American single).
Yes reworked Simon & Garfunkel's "America" entirely, with a long and
basically unrelated intro (complete with implied snatches of the West Side
Story "America") and an alien, elaborate vocal structure which gives the
impression that the song is being sung phonetically by a foreign vocalist.
The most interesting track is "Dear Father," previously unavailable on LP
and apparently a plea from a doubtful and confused Jesus. It's a
relatively straight pop-rock song, with a recurring chorus full of
harmonies and some impressive melodic fragments, and it's literally
smothered in an overwhelming orchestral arrangement. An atypical number.
Of all the material on Yesterdays, "America" is most important as a
transition point. Later songs became even more intricate, bordering on the
unfathomable while the lyrics meandered into murkier mystic modes. Yes's
last album, Tales from Topographic Oceans, was four sides' worth of
hopelessly dense complexity that left many observers recoiling in utter
dismay and taxed even the group's most ardent supporters.
Relayer may exhaust even the devoted. Singer Jon Anderson's words plumb
new depths of turgidity. Side one of Relayer is taken up by a 22-minute
track called "The Gates of Delirium," a titanic battle-of-the-mind-forces
allegory of sorts. A sample stanza:
Choose and renounce throwing chains to the floor
Kill or be killing faster sins correct the flow
Casting giant shadows off vast penetrating force
To alter via the war that seen
As friction spans the spirits wrath ascending (slowly) to redeem
Pretentious balderdash no matter how you stack it and the remaining lyrics
are only marginally clearer.
The music seems equally chaotic. Opening with sheets of cascading guitars
and wheeling Mellotrons, it breaks off into a fairly melodic vocal segment.
This is followed by a seemingly endless frenzy of clattering, discordant
guitar work and demoniacal synthesized electronics. Finally an infusion of
lyrical guitar and soaring Mellotron signals battle's end, with a strangely
MOR-oriented vocal section closing the piece.
On the other side, "Sound Chaser" brims with jagged, randomized riffs and
discordant fragments, quite intricate, with no identifying structural
links. "To Be Over," however, has a pretty (though ponderously structured)
melody and some tasteful guitar work.
Relayer, despite occasional enjoyable interludes, is an excessive,
pretentious and ill-conceived album. The folly of Yes's extreme approach
is becoming only too apparent.
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