Heaven & Earth (2014)
Jon Davison - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
Geoff Downes - Keyboards
Steve Howe - Guitars, Vocals
Chris Squire - Bass, Vocals
Alan White - Drums
Believe Again (Davison, Howe)
8:02The Game (Squire, Davison, Johnson)
6:51Step Beyond (Howe, Davison)
5:34To Ascend (Davison, White)
4:43In a World of Our Own (Davison, Squire)
5:20Light of the Ages (Davison)
7:41It Was All We Knew (Howe)
4:13Subway Walls (Davison, Downes)
9:03----------
Touring for the 2011 album
Fly From Here was interrupted when lead singer Benoit David contracted a respiratory infection. In January 2012, Chris Squire announced that he had been replaced by Jon Davison, lead singer from Glass Hammer. In typical Yes fashion, the transition was handled poorly, with Benoit only finding out that he had been replaced when he heard the interview with Chris on the radio. Jon Davison was recommended to Chris via a mutual friend, drummer Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters. Jon was brought up to speed, Yes completed the tour with Jon, and he has been the lead singer ever since.
In 2013, Yes was one of the key bands featured on the "Cruise to the Edge" series, a cooperative endeavor between Norwegian Cruise Lines and Yes, along with several other prog bands. The 2013 setlist included the albums
Close to the Edge and
The Yes Album, each played in their entirety and in original track order. They followed this with the "Three Album Tour", adding the album
Going for the One also played in its entirety and in order.
In early 2014, Yes announced that they were back in the studio working on a new album, and
Heaven and Earth was released in July 2014.
I'll be blunt: I struggle to get through this album. It all sounds great; production values are terrific, there's none of the horrible compression and artificial loudness which plagues most modern recordings, and the playing is all excellent. Jon Davison sounds very much like Jon Anderson did in the 70's, with just a bit of Trevor Horn, and his voice blends with Chris Squire's and Steve Howe's very nicely. But this is easily the most boring, the most bland Yes album of all.
Open Your Eyes doesn't have the fire of 70's Yes, but even though the songs are all pretty standard, almost pop songs, they're delivered with an energy and fire. Steve Howe is in full form. Alan White has to be held back. Chris Squire owns the lower end, as always.
Magnification is mellow, but it's different, the arrangements are inspired, and the orchestra adds some punch.
Here, despite the core of Howe, Squire, and White, along with now-veteran Geoff Downes on keys, there's none of the fire. The band doesn't sound tired; they just sound like they're content to play adult contemporary "light rock" now. Lots of Jon Davison's acoustic strumming, lots of the trademark Yes three-part vocal harmonies. It sounds great. And I'm sorry, but it's really, really boring.
This is particularly disappointing because the band had spent most of the past two years playing Yes albums from the 70's in their entirety, and many had hoped that the new album would reflect some of the "old Yes". The adventure, the energy, the prog. The band was quoted throughout the process, saying how exciting it was to be recording new music, especially with Jon, who is a gifted song writer. His former band Glass Hammer is often cited as one of the better, more underrated new prog bands. Jon Davison wrote or co-wrote seven of the eight tracks here.
The longer track times seem to hint that the songs at least go through a few changes, maybe even a few instrumental passages. This is Yes, after all. Instead, the songs are longer because they simply going on forever, repeating their wonderful choruses over and over again. There are no genuine uptempo tracks. Everything is medium-tempo and mellow. The closest thing to an actual, catchy song is probably "Step Beyond", which has a bouncing, lilting synth hook throughout. I personally find it kind of catchy, but a lot of Yesfans find it annoying after a while. "In a World of Our Own" starts off with a drum pattern with kicks and rim shots, and goes into a shuffle reminiscent of the acoustic version of "Roundabout" (if you've never heard it, well, you're not really missing anything), but the song itself never goes anywhere. That's it. It's a shuffle. Variety!
The final track, "Subway Walls" is the strongest track and the only track even approaching prog. It starts promisingly, with a keyboard orchestral section (think "Man in a White Car" from
Drama, only more developed) and goes into a reasonably interesting song complete with a breakdown in some crazy time signature. But it turns out that it's just 4/4 with some syncopation, a bit repetitive, and overall not nearly as clever as you'd first thought. Then it comes back to the song and finishes up. And that's the end of the album.
If "Subway Walls" had been the first track rather than the last, the album as a whole might have worked better. It would have set the tone much better. Grab people with the best track, one that eases you into the fact that this is an older, mellower Yes. Instead, you sit through seven pretty bland tracks, and the payoff is minimal.
As I've said before, it's not that prog = good and pop = bad. It's that this is Yes, and there is a certain expectation from musicians and songwriters of this caliber. Especially when they talked about how the band has been "revitalized" by the new singer and how "exciting" this new music is. When I hear this music and picture them playing it, I literally imagine a bunch of old men sitting on someone's porch in rocking chairs, strumming guitars and singing in nice, three-part harmony. Alan is nearby, beating on some boxes with his drum sticks, and Geoff, inexplicably, has seven or eight keyboards all plugged in somewhere, even though they all sound the same.
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I struggled to write this, just as I struggled to get through the album. I struggled to find anything positive to say about it, other than that it sounds really great. But I felt like I'd started this whole thing rolling, The Yes Discography, and that meant an implied obligation to continue it when more albums came out. This is a Yes album, their twenty-first studio album. I bought it on release day, so excited to have new Yes. And even if I wasn't expecting another
Close to the Edge, I was not expecting... this. I want to say that they sound tired, but that's not it at all. They don't sound tired; they sound like this slow, mellow stuff is exactly what they want it to be. This is the album they wanted to make. If, back in the 70's, you'd been asked to imagine what they would sound like 30-some years later, if they were still around, I suppose you might guess it would sound like this. They've slowed down. This is what's comfortable to them now.
And of course, Chris Squire died of leukemia on June 27, 2015. His condition had only been announced to the public on May 19, so even if it was not entirely surprising, it was still a shock to many. Longtime collaborator and former Yesman Billy Sherwood was Chris' choice to replace him for the upcoming tour, which begins on August 7 of this year. It will be the first time Yes has taken the stage without Chris Squire, and Chris is the only person to have played on all 21 Yes studio albums.
At this time, the future of Yes is uncertain. They will likely make a decision following the upcoming tour.
Topic: The Yes Discography: Mirror to the Sky (2023) (Read 89208 times)
