ANDERSON BRUFORD WAKEMAN HOWE

This album gets quite a mixed reception by prog fans, unfortunately. It's certainly not in the vain of early classic Yes albums like Fragile or Close To The Edge. I don't think that was the intention of Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Rick Wakeman, and Steve Howe when they reunited to record this album, so they get a pass in that regard. Anderson had grown weary of the short song pop direction of Yes over their last albums, 90125 and Big Generator, and wanted to return to longer multi suite songs, and this album does indeed have them.

As far as the actual sound of the album, it is not light years away from those pop oriented Yes albums courtesy of Bruford's electronic drums, Wakeman's 80's synth tones and guest bassist Tony Leven's plodding playing. What is different is that the songs are just better than those found on Yes's last album Big Generator and Anderson's peace and love themed lyrics are presented in mostly high energy formats with "First Of Fire", "Brother Of Mine", "The Meeting", "Quartet", and 'Order Of The Universe" being infectious sing along anthems. The only big misstep here is the over the top Latin and Caribbean inflected "Teakbois", which naturally comes off as corny, but is light years better than "Illegal Alien" by Genesis.

With a string of solid, if not classic songs, Anderson - Bruford,- Wakeman - Howe is firmly a 3 star album, but it's upbeat optimism helps to put it's rating a half star higher. In the modern climate of this world that's a very welcome attribute. 3.5 rounded down to 3.