The Yes Album

Album review

The circumstances surrounding the creation of The Yes Album were far from auspicious. Original Yes member Peter Banks had left, the group's manager quit (and took a substantial chunk of their money with him), and, the day before the scheduled photo shoot for the album cover, the entire band was in a head-on car crash while returning from a concert. On top of all of that, the sessions were colored by the omnipresent pressure of their record company, which had made it clear that, after the dismal sales of their first two albums, Yes's third release needed to make a substantial commercial impact or the band would likely be released from their contract. Incredibly, all of these factors wound up making a positive impact on The Yes Album, which not only broke big enough to save their bacon with their label, but also set them up for a one-two punch with the quick follow-up of Fragile. The addition of guitarist Steve Howe as Banks' replacement vastly expanded the range of textural and compositional possibilities for the group, and the undeniable esprit de corps in the band's approach to the material was undoubtedly heightened by their collective bitterness against their former manager; even the cover art got an unplanned extra bit of weirdness, thanks to keyboardist Tony Kaye's leg being in a cast due to the auto accident. (Ironically, this was Kaye's last album for Yes; he would be replaced by Rick Wakeman later in 1971 for the making of Fragile.) The music of The Yes Album is unique in the band's catalog, as it sits precisely at a fulcrum between the arty pop/rock of their first two albums and the denser fantasias of their post-Fragile output. While Fragile was a much bigger hit (thanks to "Long Distance Runaround" and "Roundabout"), The Yes Album was still a substantial breakthrough, and is more daringly structured, balancing more complex numbers like "Perpetual Change" and "Starship Trooper" with direct, melody-driven tunes like "I've Seen All Good People" and the jazzy "A Venture." And then, there's "Yours Is No Disgrace," a 10-minute album opener that somehow manages to be both a devastatingly catchy earworm and an ostentatious, multi-part suite, which makes it a perfect introduction to an album which is also exactly those two things. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz