TORMATO

"Where we are coming from or where we go, we only know we come with sound..."

There is no Yes album I have more complicated feelings on than this. It is my favorite example of what I call a "hot and cold" album, one which I overall would consider middling in quality, but not because it is consistently lackluster, but because it contains a blend of outright incredible music with abysmal garbage. I can't entirely blame them for how this turned out, as it was a bit of an experiment in creating an album without incorporating any unfinished older material, as well as a shot at another double album. This more improvisational songwriting process, combined with the feeling of needing to aim for quantity over quality, left them unable to refine their material, giving us an album full of dud ideas that should've been nipped in the bud alongside quite a few sparks of the old genius.

Even before putting this thing on, you can tell something is wrong from the title and cover art alone. Yes ditched Roger Dean for Hipgnosis on Going For the One, a choice I'm already quite critical of, but that cover was at least evocative of SOMETHING. This kind of presentation might've worked for Zappa, but Yes have always gone for earnest sincerity over tongue-in-cheek humor. so this dapper man with dowsing rods would probably have been a far more fitting cover were it not spattered with tomatoes to match the extremely silly title. Its original title, "Eleventh Illusion", is a much more "Yes" album name than "Tormato" and my opinion of the record would likely be a bit warmer if it had retained it and a Roger Dean cover (or at the very least, didn't have the stupid tomatoes).

The other overarching problem here, of course, is the production. From what I understand, the band were experimenting with new gear and studio techniques at the time, but a lack of familiarity with the new technology led to a lot of missteps in both the sound of the instruments and the mixing. The end result was that the whole thing sounds very flat, hollow, and sparse, lacking the lush soundscapes that are characteristic of Yes' prior work. This problem is so pervasive throughout the record that it'd just get annoying if I kept bringing it up, so just keep in mind how awful the mix sounds as I go through this thing track-by-track, even when it comes to the good songs.

"Future Times/Rejoice" reminds me a lot of the sound Yes went for on some of their later material (namely ABWH, the studio tracks on Keys to Ascension, and The Ladder). It's a bit schmaltzy, almost like a pop group trying their best to imitate Yes' classic sound. I don't get this vibe off any other material on here, JUST this song, which makes it a bit curious. The issue might be Jon's vocal delivery, which reminds me a bit of some of that late 80s/90s material, but I'm not quite sure, as I also get the feeling that a lot of the instrumentation is superfluous and a bit slapsdash, a lot of noise which isn't really coming together. All that said though, I don't find the song outright irritating or repulsive, just forgettable and mediocre at the end of the day, in the same way that most of what's on those later albums is.

"Don't Kill the Whale" was an attempt by Yes to try and break through on mainstream pop radio. It even got a (barebones) music video, which in the days before MTV was pretty rare. This is very understandable given the circumstances at the time, what with the music industry turning towards favoring more commercial artists to the exclusion of artsier ones. This development is ultimately what "killed" prog, and Yes' first attempt at trying to adapt to changing times is...actually pretty solid! Yeah, this is one of the better songs on here despite the fact it's just straightforward pop. I love the guitarwork, the clapping near the end is fun, and it's pretty catchy in the way that all good pop songs are. The lyrics are much more straightforward and preachy than most Yes songs, which unfortunately takes them into "cloying charity single" territory. I could live without them, but they don't ruin the song. What DOES ruin things, at least a bit, is the keyboard solo. I don't know which synth that is (the liner notes mention both a Polymoog and an extremely rare Mellotron variant, the "Birotron") but whatever it is sounds like a mix of a child's toy piano and someone blowing raspberries. Extremely grating and a big black mark on what otherwise is a fun little pop song.

"Madrigal" is extremely so-so. Better than Future Times, but still in that forgettable territory, essentially a filler track. I like the pseudo-medieval sound the keyboard and guitar have here, and the acoustic guitar solo is fine, but it's just kind of...there.

If Tormato as a whole is a "hot and cold album", "Release Release" is best described as its own little microcosm of that, a "hot and cold song" equal parts good and bad. There's so much to like here: the guitar riffs, the melody, the chorus, the intro, the vocals, the guitar solo, the little drum solo before the guitar solo, the rhythm section, hell even the infamous keyboard sounds better than usual here...but all of that is held back by two baffling creative decisions. The most persistent problem here is the guitar tone. Steve Howe is not exactly known for messing around with effects pedals or distortion much, but he really should've put his misgivings aside for this one. As much as I love the riffs, they feel so limp, weak, and thin throughout most of the song. The solo features a level of distortion I think would've massively improved this song if the whole thing sounded like it. On top of that, this includes my biggest musical pet peeve: FAKE CROWD NOISES. It's just so gauche and tacky, it screams "desperate for approval". I do not believe there's a single context in which a studio recording benefits from this kind of fake crowd noise effect. Just awful. I WANT to like this song far more than I actually do, I'm giving it as much charity as I can, but I just wind up with mixed feelings. (Also, can I just point out that the riff that immediately follows the intro sounds a lot like the TMNT theme? It's so silly but that's all I can hear when I listen to it.)

While Side A is just mediocre at worst, Side B quite rudely greets us with "Arriving UFO". This is the first of what are, without a doubt, the worst two songs in Yes' discography. "Bad Yes" normally just means really boring filler music like the majority of what they recorded in the 90s, but these two songs cross the line into outright obnoxious territory. This is essentially a novelty song, complete with "sci-fi" synth sound effects and a "UFO crash" at the end, and is just as annoying as most novelty songs are. It's so gimmicky, it's almost a parody of conceptual prog rock. Not to mention the lyrics are awful, just kind of awkward and stumbling instead of the dreamy poetic stuff that Jon usually does. I love it when he leans into the "wackier" angles of his New Age spirituality, like all the Atlantis stuff on Tales from Topographic Oceans, so it's disappointing that his first song exploring UFO cults and the idea of alien messiahs coming to save humanity is this garbage. I guess the only compliment I have here is that the bassline is good, but that's kind of a given, you really can't go wrong with Chris Squire.

But if Arriving UFO wasn't bad enough, we're thrown right into "Circus of Heaven", which manages to crank the annoying level up by an exponential degree. It's got the same "novelty song" vibes as UFO, but this time mostly thanks to an appearance of Jon's young son at the end to deliver a really lame punchline. I get you love your kid, man, but he really doesn't belong here. Somehow Jon himself sounds just as childlike on vocals, though. He sounds like he's straining his voice, stumbling through his lines like a child who only got into a talent show because his parents wanted him to feel special. The instrumental is barebones and feels almost like a music box, which I guess is tonally fitting, but sounds like crap. The latter half is less grating than the first instrumentally, but Jon's vocals still suck and his kid doesn't belong on here. Far and away my most hated Yes song.

"Onward", thankfully, pulls us out of the garbage heap, as it's a simple but effective little song. Pretty soothing, pretty calming, not an all-time classic but I like it well enough. It's a little bit more memorable than Future Times and Madrigal, and I like the strings a lot. Honestly, if this were an entirely acoustic piece, it might be able to stand on par with Long Distance Runaround, Turn of the Century, or the Leaves of Green section of The Ancient. It just needs a little bit more polish.

Finally, we reach...the entire reason I'm doing this review. "On the Silent Wings of Freedom" is not only the best song on here, but good enough to transcend Tormato entirely. This is top-shelf Yes, on par with their golden age and among their best in every respect besides the fact it's on an album with really crappy production. Everything about this song is encapsulated perfectly by the title, just a few seconds in and you feel like you've got wings and are soaring through the air above a fantastic Roger Dean landscape. The bass in this song is absolutely incredible, some of Chris' best, and despite the issues with how this album was produced, they did a great job making sure it was front and center in the mix. I also love the little guitar lick that sporadically pops up throughout the song, and for once a song on this album has those classic poetic-hippie-nonsense lyrics from Jon. This song is so good that even the return of the "toy piano" keyboard in the solo at the end isn't able to drag it down, a chintzy tone can't stop the solo from feeling like one of those classic Yes crescendos. It's this classic which elevates Tormato to half-decent status, in spite of everything. Without Silent Wings, even the best songs here would have some serious flaws, but this song is just so damn fantastic that it's the one I can say I love without any qualifications.

If there's one thing I can say in Tormato's favor, it's that it's bad in an extremely interesting way. Yes' worst albums are just back-to-back forgettable nothing music, where every song has the same problems and you just don't feel anything. This album has some tracks like that, but it's equal parts "really good despite the production issues" and "absolute abysmal garbage", leaving us with something that's polarizing and merits discussion and debate. It's unfortunate that this is the album which finally ended Yes' classic era, but we've at least got something worth analyzing in it.

BEST TRACK: On the Silent Wings of Freedom

WEAKEST TRACK: Circus of Heaven

Social review comments

Review related links

• Send comments to Soarel
• Report this review (#2272902)
• Buy YES music online with PA partners
• Show all YES MP3/Stream
• Go to YES page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Tormato page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for YES related discussions