TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS

This album's infamous "marmite" reputation, both among fans and critics and the members of Yes themselves, hangs over nearly any discussion of it. If you're on this site, I'm sure I don't need to belabor you with the usual schpiels about how the record made the critical "Guild" start to turn against prog, Rick Wakeman tripping over wooden cow props and eating curry on stage, or Jon Anderson's understanding (or lack thereof) of his source material: you know all of this already. What I find more frustrating than the album's harshest critics is the fact that even its self-identified fans and apologists seem embarrassed when defending it. Too many positive reviews (on this site and elsewhere) couch their defenses of Tales in an ocean of their own, a sea of apologies and qualifications that dampen any positive comments they might have. It seems like the only thing that those who like and those who dislike this record can agree on is that it is too long, that it should have been cut down to the length of a single album.

I think this is utter nonsense, and come bearing no such shame. I whole-heartedly love Tales, not even "warts and all" but as an album without any proverbial warts. It's a masterpiece on par with Close to the Edge, one without any blemishes or sour moments (or at least, none significant enough to detract from its positive qualities). Far from a fatal flaw, the sprawling, atmospheric, repetitive nature of Tales is core to its entire appeal. You're supposed to get lost in the dream-like atmosphere and vague spiritual-mystical lyrics, though whether you choose to do this through the music alone or with the aid of your preferred psychoactive substance is up to you. Tales from Topographic Oceans simply cannot work as a single album, because having the length and structure it does is core to its fundamental nature.

I will note, before analyzing each track/side of this record in detail, that Alan White is perhaps one of the most underrated and overlooked musicians in 70s British prog. He may not have all of Bruford's technical chops (and is certainly outshone by the latter's work with King Crimson) but one need only listen to this album to understand why he was so fantastic. White slipped right into the band's lineup and meshed with what they were doing perfectly, both in terms of performing and his contributions to songwriting. He did not merely fill in for the hole left by Bruford, but brought the whole band together as a cohesive unit to create this unfairly maligned masterpiece of a record, despite all the tensions between them that marred its production. "Ritual" and "The Ancient" especially would not be the tracks they are without what Alan White's drums bring to them.

"The Revealing Science of God (Dance of the Dawn)" opens the album in perfect form. Many of Yes' later attempts at writing lengthy "epics" (such as "That, That Is" from 1996's Keys to Ascension) disappoint due to feeling like pop songs whose length has simply been stretched out to over 15 minutes. Revealing Science could be argued to fit this description as well, but it's the one example of this phenomenon where that's not a criticism. Gentle melodies and lush atmosphere conceal complex musical structures in a way that all of the best Yes songs do, and the end result is that there is nothing overtly challenging about this song outside of its length. Even the album's diehard critics will begrudgingly admit there is something beautiful about Revealing Science, something about the world of feel-good New Age spirituality Jon Anderson infused into the record that gets to them when they listen to this song. I have no term to describe this music other than "soul-cleansing". The pace is relaxed and deliberate, but the over 20-minute runtime just seems to fly by as you get lost in the music. Wakeman's keyboards play their most prominent role here as well, being central to the song's several crescendos. It is Jon's voice, though, that makes the finale as bombastic as it needs to be, truly marking the album as a product of his creative vision.

"The Remembering (High the Memory)" is the most relaxed of the four pieces making up Tales, and in the past was actually a bit of a sore spot for me. I have never outright disliked any song or any moment on here, but I used to consider this song's slow and "sleepy" pace as something which put it a rung below the other three. It took me a good while to really "get" The Remembering, and I'm very glad I did, because its beauty is nearly as incredible as that of Revealing Science. Its soundscape is still yet to stray onto more experimental ground, but the narrower focus of the composition makes it quite a bit less accessible than the first track. It is somehow able to strike the perfect balance between being just atmospheric and mellow enough to serve as calming "background noise", but full of so many subtle touches and sounds as to reward active listening. For me, listening to The Remembering always makes me feel like I am drifting down a peaceful river in a dense forest, surrounded by nature both otherworldly and familiar at the same time. The second half, with its more energetic "relayer" sections, comes in at just the right time to prevent the song from becoming too monotonous. It ultimately guides the song to a conclusion almost as dramatic as Revealing Science's, but seemingly more restrained due to the lack of any of the first track's preceding keyboard crescendos.

Far and away, "The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun)" is the track on Tales which seems to draw near-universal ire. Even the most positive reviews go out of their way to dump on it, writing it off as a meandering mess that drags down the rest of the record. I could not disagree more, as not only do I absolutely love The Ancient, but it's actually my favorite of the four pieces on the album. In fact, it is my second-favorite Yes song overall, a fact that makes my seeming isolation as a super-fan of it all the more painful. It is in desperate need of the outpouring of unconditional love I am about to give it.

Where the first disc remained in more accessible sonic territory, The Ancient opens the second disc opens right out of the gate with chaotic drumming and "spacey" guitarwork that marks this as the more experimental half of the album. The track is primarily instrumental, with the center of the composition shifting from Jon's vocals to Steve Howe's guitar. Howe is known for eschewing fancy effects pedals in his performances, but even his mostly unvarnished electric guitar on this track is enough to create an adventurous psychedelic atmosphere when paired with the rhythm section. The Ancient is frequently maligned as "directionless", but the chaos is the entire point of the song, a counterbalance to the more first disc's more straightforward gentle approach to beauty. As I previously mentioned, Yes excel at concealing complex musical structures behind an accessible veneer, but this song wears no such mask; its experimental nature front and center. Where The Remembering was a journey down a peaceful river, The Ancient is like a spaceflight through another dimension, one wholly alien where you have no idea what to expect next. As previously mentioned, it is here where Alan White really starts to shine as a drummer, being the perfect accompaniment to Howe's guitar and the core of the driving rhythm. Repeated listenings reveal far more care put into its structure than the noodling jam that far too many dismiss it as. Nowhere is this more apparent than how the song ends, with an acoustic guitar guiding the listener from the prior twelve minutes of whirling chaos into the "Leaves of Green" movement, which is ironically the most conventional moment on the entire album. This simple ballad serves as a gentle counterbalance to the rest of the song in the same way that the second side of the album counterbalances the first. It is this interplay, artsy, ambitious experimentation blending seamlessly with more accessible and relaxing melodies, that critics misunderstood when they wrote off Tales as "pretentious".

While the lyrics on The Ancient are very sparse outside of "Leaves of Green", they are perhaps the most interesting to me when looked at in the context of their inspirations. Heavily influenced by John Mitchell's "The View Over Atlantis" and the general idea of a lost, super-advanced ancient civilization, the Ancient connects the album with pseudohistory and esotericism in a way that only strengthens its atmosphere. Something about Jon chanting the name of the sun in fourteen world languages, evoking hyperdiffusionist theories of all civilizations tracing back to an antediluvian common ancestor, is just so damn cool. Much like how the nineteenth-century occult movement at the root of today's New Age beliefs has served as fertile inspiration for art and fiction, the much-maligned inaccuracy in Jon's portrayal of the Vedic scriptures on this record only deepens its strangeness for me. As a non-believer in his brand of spirituality, I can only evaluate its role here in artistic terms, and in that regard I think the Tales concept works fantastically well.

The grand finale, "Ritual (Nous Sommes du Soleil)", is the song I connect with the least. This is not because I consider it a flaw with the album or a weak point, as I am firmly of the belief Tales has no weak points, but simply because it is a song which can only truly be appreciated as part of a greater whole. Its fundamental nature is being a kind of "summary" for the album as a whole, going as far as to directly quite melodies and elements of the preceding three songs in a manner reminiscent of a symphonic overture. While The Ancient may be more chaotic from moment to moment, Ritual jumps back and forth between the tone, pace, and atmosphere of the previous three songs in a way that makes it the most eclectic side of Tales. The most abrupt such shift is at the fourteen-minute mark, a surprise drum solo that evokes The Ancient while surpassing it in terms of sheer weirdness. I believe it was incorporated a kind of "showcase" for White, to reassure fans that he could stand on par with Bruford, but even outside that context it is by far the most memorable and musically interesting moment on this song (and possibly the entire album). This section is only made better by how it's immediately followed by a return of the song's chorus, yet another example of the album's signature interplay of progressive weirdness and chill-out accessibility. Really, this is the only way this album could've possibly concluded.

Tales from Topographic Oceans is the definition of a masterpiece. It is the essence of Yes, the essence of Jon Anderson, expressed in a maximalist and grandiose way that any true masterpiece should be. Rather than revealing Yes (or progressive rock as a whole) to be some kind of overblown pap, it cemented just how worthless and anti-art the critical establishment truly is. There really is no bile thrown towards this album that wouldn't equally apply to other records beloved by critics. Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, for example, bears an almost identical structure to Tales musically, and is far more spacey and "meandering" than even Tales' most "out-there" moments, but it doesn't catch even a fragment of the flak Tales does. Maybe it really is just the New Age stuff and how much Jon drenches the album in its concept that rubs people the wrong way. Maybe it's the complete lack of irony, of "self-awareness" or shame, the unapologetic sincerity of it all. I just don't see how someone can love prog, can love Yes, but not love Tales.

BEST TRACK: The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun)

WEAKEST TRACK: Ritual (Nous Sommes du Soleil)

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