UNION

The band's best album since "Going For the One" as far as I'm concerned.

It certainly beats the living hell out of "90125", "Big Generator" "Talk" and "Open Your Eyes". The inclusion of past YES members on this album, especially STEVE HOWE couldn't be more welcome, and it's this all-inclusion that is the album's saving grace and allows it to rise far above anything else of this era of the band.

That said, this is of course still not the epic, flowering grandeur of the respected, classic YES, but a new YES. More proggy by far than any of the other RABIN era YES releases, though not in the symphonic respect of the classic work, here YES find a magnificently kinetic, rhythmic, dynamic, diverse, even world music influenced vehicle for recapturing some of the old, treasured YES magic missing utterly from the releases surrounding this album.

The low points of "Union" for me, are when the band fall into their usual 80s pop rock fare of the previous couple releases, (most notably the single "Lift me Up") though, even those manage a greater sense of energy and euphoria certainly than anything on "Big Generator". I don't feel though that the album comes across as incoherent or directionless, exactly. More simply a diverse release, as there's material here that the band really hadn't gone into before, but this was an amalgam of another RABIN YES and a second ABWH release afterall. I wonder what was even the reason for those ABWH releases. It was as if YES was being split in two directions for whatever reason, (legal crap?) and here they came together, giving us a glimpse that the YES magic was still buried under it all somewhere.

"I Would have Waited Forever" and "Miracle of Life" alone are a magnificent culmination of the various apects of the band at this time, and a perfect example of a new voice for the musical beauty that has always been the true YES, though the album is truely full of beautiful, and again diverse songs. But listen to those and if you don't like them, there's probably nothing on "Union" for you. Listen to "Union", and if you don't like it, there's certainly nothing in the RABIN era of YES for you because this is by Far the hight point.

In all, while utterly despising nearly all the band's 80s and 90s work, I find much of beauty and much to love about this album. Except "Dangerous (Look in the Light of what You're Searching for). Yuck. Complete throw-away track that belongs on "Big Generator".

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