I'm on my second listen now. Definitely a step up from The Quest, which makes it two steps up from Heaven & Earth. More Steve Howe goodness all over the place, and at this point he's carrying the band pretty much by himself. When we still had Squire and White... well, we got Heaven & Earth, so I guess their presence or absence wasn't the missing magic ingredient. I'm always disappointed that Geoff Downes doesn't contribute more to Yes musically. He plays, but he rarely writes. One co-writing credit on the album. For some reason I thought he was more of a collaborator, with Asia and The Buggles for example. Maybe not. I've never actually bothered to check.
Jon Davison sings in the same range as Jon Anderson, so it's obvious why he is the vocalist, and sometimes he even sounds like him in some ways, but I agree with those who say he doesn't have the range of emotion or the strength that Anderson has. Yeah yeah yeah, Anderson is out there doing amazing shows with a bunch of other guys playing Yes music. That's still not new music. Here, we have new Yes music, and while it's not blowing me away, it's not bad. A bit of a pleasant surprise, actually. There's more uptempo stuff, more actual rocking. Steve is all over it, basically carrying things as I said, but hey, someone has to. Produced by Steve Howe, all three songs on the Bonus Disc solely written by him, co-writing credits on 4/6 of the main tracks.