Raveiews from the Fringe
By HuggyDave
Welcome back to the Fringe, a place of wonder, nonconformity and a veritable sea of forgotten music. Last time, I talked about possibly the worst, most damaging album in music; an album that alone did some significant damage to an entire genre, and with the help of two other albums by the two other biggest names in Prog at the time managed to kill the genre as anything that could be taken seriously. In fact, 1978 killed Progressive Rock so badly that it was an utter laughing stock for the next two decades. However, the causes weren't just an abject lack of quality, although in these albums not one of the bands really brought their A-Game to the production studio, but personal problems, a lack of unity and the winds of change blowing straight into their faces and their desperate attempts to change course ending in either utter mockery or backlash from fans and critics alike.
I invite you to guess how this ended up, as I bring to you:
Tormato - Yes (1978)
The Death of Prog Part 2: The Fragile Union
I have a somewhat bizarre relationship with Yes, in that I adore and cherish all that I've heard of them (which admittedly isn't as much as I'd like). Indeed, Close To the Edge may possibly be in my Top Ten favourite albums I've ever listened to. However, like all the most wonderful pursuits it is incredibly easy to get burned out on their music and just not be willing to commit the vast swathes of time you need to to fully enjoy something like “Roundabout”. I can assume the purchasing public was the same, and sales of Yes albums were somewhat inconsistent; some shot up to number one while at the same time others made heavy work of reaching the top ten then sunk without a trace. That said, a few blips aside, they are one of the few long running bands where every album has at least a tiny bit of that Yes magic, and for the most part, whether you'll like a particular album is based entirely on whether you like the other twenty or so.
This is unfortunately one of the exceptions, for reasons we'll very savagely go into.
Yes are one of the big monoliths that design and epitomise Prog rock, and probably one of the biggest love it or hate it bands in rock: a somewhat broken genre as it is. From their first big hit The Yes Album in 1971 up until the 1990s was a consistent feature in the Top Ten album charts, and their line up for a long time consisted of some of the best musicians alive at the time, leading to some incredibly memorable moments on each album. That said, one could rarely say the different instruments ever gelled particularly well, as if every single instrument was competing incredibly strongly for the listener's attention, so you'd get the most incredibly quick solos just striking at random moments, then a keyboard solo for fifteen minutes before you can breathe, before being accosted by the distinctive alto of longtime frontman Jon Anderson. These albums were not albums you could just put on and allow the music to breathe a relaxed controlled life into the room, they demanded good ears, better headphones and your fullest attention. This kind of marketplace style of musicianship, while you could not fault it technically, did sort of hamper the band's ability to write actual songs, as opposed to fantastic little bits of music lined up almost at random, though nowhere near to the same degree of unlistenability as our good friend ELP. It wasn't so much that they couldn't write as much as they ended up writing too much and don't quite agree on how to piece it together.
All this is redundant though, since at their peak not only were they absolutely awesome, but got rewarded with success. From 1973 to '77, their albums hit the top five. Hell, Tales of Topographic Oceans, the album cited along with anything ELP as every single thing wrong with prog rock, hit number one! And this feat was followed up by possibly the most underrated album in their discography, Relayer! And after that, another chart topping album in Going For the One!
What's my point you ask, other than to out myself as a drooling prog rock fanboy? My point is that Yes essentially is an anomaly: a group so fundamentally wrong in all aspects that is all becomes so so right. That they are utterly mad, yet their madness has such a profound method it leaps forth into genius. And that, much like ELP, Yes' problems, while at first glance appearing to be a sudden plummet of quality being the product of small issues taking their toll.
You see my dear reader (if there's even one left after this monolith of introduction), the issue with Tormato begins with the production of Tales of Topographic Oceans, and really how it essentially became a vanity project for alto vocalist Jon Anderson and gnarled guitarist Steve Howe. This alienated the rest of the band to a degree, in particular Rick Wakeman, who spent any time Topographic songs were played on tour eating curries. Wakeman then left, shockingly, to focus on his solo work, which is more than a little bombastic...
After an album with Swedish keyboardist Patrick Moraz, Wakeman returned for the chart topper Going for the one, which blended very listenable shorter songs with the classic yes style. The problem of course is that Going for the One was a sleeper hit really; After 3 years it was difficult to see how Yes would have a hit at all, let alone a number one. But the gambit worked, which led to more problems than it solved. Topographic was a number one despite being essentially a Yes symphony, while Going for the One was the polar opposite, taking Yes in bold new directions yet keeping the same musicianship, innovation and musical philosophy.
You can see how Tormato was a difficult birth to begin with even before a single note was written down. Originally known as Yes Tor, the album essentially suffered from a lot of production issues that hampered the material, as well as a cover so bad, Rick Wakeman threw a tomato at it, and essentially changed both the name, and the album cover:
Putting the Prog into Pillory
Alright, enough waffling about things that don't really matter, let's get to the music, because if the music's good enough, it could transcend even the band's loathing of the material.
The album begins with the rather nice, catching “Future Times/Rejoice”, which I must say I enjoy quite a lot. Wakeman's fantastic synth really helps elevate Anderson's sometimes punishingly high vocals, and while it suffers from the classic problem of all the musicians jostling for position to try and get your attention, there is some fantastic work all around but one of the main issues of the album quickly stands out and that is the production. I tend to like to dance around the issues with an album, but this time I have to be blunt: the production is abysmal! This is a serious problem, as one of the key things that made a Yes album great was how slickly it was produced to essentially reclaim order from the chaotic squabble, yet here (even on the Remaster, which helps some of the other issues I've heard about the album) they trip over each other far more than they should have, turning some great synthesiser and guitar supposed “harmonies” into a jumbled disjointed mess, with only Anderson's nonsense lyrics reminding you that yes (or is that Yes. Oh aren't I such a wit!), this is a song.
The next track is so obviously single bait that it wasn't even funny. Don't Kill the Whale is a short song based on an exceedingly catchy hook, but yet at the same time contains an extended solo section, as if the band weren't quite sure where they wanted to go with it. Again, this is an utter shame, as it would have made for a nice late 70s rock song without the confusion. Oh, and maybe if you could hear Chris Squire's usually dominant basslines.
And then the filler begins, as it does on so many Yes albums. Madrigal isn't a bad song per se, but really has no time to provide you with anything but some nice synth strings, accoustic guitar work and the feeling that they wasted two minutes with this. And waste is right, since it goes into a very Genesis-sounding rock song, Release Release, which is actually a nice change for Yes. Or maybe I just like the fact that one of the riffs sounds like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. However, again, this song is ruined by the two eternal bogeyman of the album: Production and direction. Release Release essentially is the answer to the question of why classic Yes should not try their hand at classic rock. Added to that is a downright pandering drum solo with piped in cheers and a more bluesy solo than we typically see from Steve Howe ruined by the same football cheers! Added to that is the really odd lyrics for yes that would be more expected on an AC/DC track:
Have you heard before, hit it out, don't look back
Rock is the medium of our generation
Stand for every right, kick it out, hear you shout
For the right of all of creation
It's such a strange mix of the typical naturalistic Yes imagery and typical “proud to be a rocker” rhetoric that I should in theory love, but instead Anderson's classic Yes delivery really harms the track. The fact the track following it is a very Fragile-esque ditty about UFO spotters doesn't help things either.
Typically a Yes album really works because of it's flow; even if the songs don't explicitly continue on from each other, they have this great flow that makes the album feel complete as opposed to an album full of disjointed singles. Take a wild guess what this is. The thing is, with a little more continuity I'd actually probably love it but the fact they just whip the mood around like a cat 'o' nine tails from naturalistic acoustic nothing-songs to hard rock to the quirky stuff we actually know Yes for is really disconcerting, and I could imagine that probably hurt the opinion of the album with more than a few fans.
Circus of Heaven doesn't assault you full force unlike the last couple of tracks and is a surprisingly stripped down track for Yes, reducing the melody to Anderson and the synth as opposed to the wall of musicality you typically have to scale in this album. It's a rather pleasant track, though rather unmemorable and really doesn't go anywhere: a typical downside to Yes' shorter tracks. Onward has the same problem, compounded by the utter lack of any catchy riff and its very plodding pace typical more of a pop ballad than a Yes album. It kind of washed over me...
...before I was kicked in the face by the start of the closer, On the Silent Wings of Freedom. There seems to be some severe audio balencing issues with Howe's guitar, in that in no other album is it this jangly and painful to listen to. The opening instrumental is pretty bad all around. Once the vocals kick in, the song picks up just a bit, or at least is forced into some kind of order that makes it actually listenable. This final song is to its credit like the middle of a much longer, much better Yes song, and like most massive Yes songs it has a ton of memorable musical moments, including a fantastic Rick Wakeman keyboard solo. However, it really just stops, as if it was literally part of a bigger song that was cut for some unexplored reason. And that essentially sums up the album in a nutshell.
This album is a weird one to comment on really since while it has a lot of absolutely astounding aspects to it, it has even more problems, some of which so innate that even a rather good remaster of it can't truly save it's legacy. It was such a misstep that it set into motion a chain of events that led to the break up of Yes after the infamous Drama and its return as a pop rock band much like a lot of prog bands that actually survived into the 80s. Drama is a much worse album than Tormato, though since that came way after the writing was on the wall for prog, it'll have to be a tale for another time. Next comes the final, most depressing nail in the coffin of prog, and then there were three... reviews... under my belt.
No comments:
Post a Comment