FRAGILE

This album receives from my rating the maximum of five stars,but flaws that are not hard to detect do exist. Fragile suffers ocassionally from the nightmare that haunts progressive music:pretension.There is indeed a serious risk of musical pretension when five musicians with almost unmatchable skills in their respective instruments are decided to achieve musical perfection.Personally,what I consider to be Yes most essential atribute is the ability to make ALL the instruments listenable and joyfull to the listener without losing the richness of their melodies.To acomplish that with the omnipresence of a bass guitar is,to say the least,impressive.But not even Chris Squire can escape from pretention by making an unacompanied bass solo wich takes the time of an entire track,and pridefully name it 'The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)'. So being,i'm tempted to take at least one star away from this album,but i just can't.Simply because,when Yes play as group,and even in some individual moments,they make sure to provide the closest thing one could possibly get to a perfect symphony between harmony,rhythm and melody.This may sound exagerated,but unless you heard it at least the necessary amount of times to understand what this kind of music is about,you have no idea of how much beauty can fit in a single rock song. Roundabout is truly a celebration of life.All the four instruments sing in perfect syntony,and not a single note could be removed without causing a lack of beauty to this composition.It is wonderfully 'fragile',but at the same time it shows a confident band that can naturally move this piece from a 'lighter' arrangement during the first to verses,into a tense mid-session driven all the way through by a bass riff. All this is completed,of course,by the gifted voice of Jon Anderson.As expected from a Yes song,the lyrics are also easily enjoyable by anyone who has ears. South Side of the Sky shows a heavier band,and even though the main lines don't have the mighty of Roundabout,it all comes down again with what is quite likely one of the single most brilliant instrumental sessions in rock music:it starts with a jazzy piano solo by Rick Wakeman(wich might as well stand side by side with the most remarkable moments of Sixe Wives of Henry VIII),short lenghted but still beautifull,followed than by the rest of the band. Mood For A Day is a flamenco guitar piece by Steve Howe,wonderfully rich in complexity,and still enjoyable by the most casual listener.Undoubtly the best of the five tracks in the album written individually by each member of the band.It is completely unacompanied,still it naturally acomplish what many bands take an entire career to. Heart of the Sunrise has a very unusual time signature,that spots a ten minute journey through classic,jazz and rock.Agressive,beautifull and misterious.A certain tension noticeable all along this song gives it an exotic feel,closing the album in a very singular way. Unfortunately,the individual compostions(with the exceptions of the already mentioned Mood For A Day and the remarkable We Have Heaven),located in beetwen the main arrengements,take away some of the stunning impression Fragile can cause in the most carefull listeners.This,however,would be enhanced in the writing sessions of Close To the Edge,the only album that presented the efforts of Jon Anderson,Chris Squire,Steve Howe,Rick Wakeman and Bill Brufford(arguably the most virtuos group of muscians ever to be united in a rock band)as a whole.