Sometimes a good idea is just that. And many a muse's gift bestowed in a late-night
reverie loses its lustre in the lucidity of morning. But STEVE HOVE and JON ANDERSON,
architects of the inscrutable four-movement "Tales From Topographic Oceans",
dragged their bandmates through the musical wilderness in search of their holy grail all
the same. The four parts, each a little over twenty minutes in length, apparently relate
to the four parts of the shastrick scriptures (ANDERSON further obfuscates the album's
intent with predictably vague interpretations of the individual movements). The lyrics,
credited to HOWE and ANDERSON, are more spiritually inclined than past efforts, but
otherwise stick to the successful idiom of word-painting rather than literal description.
The music, credited to the band, is the real problem. There are isolated moments of
majesty that recall the high points of "Close to the Edge" and "Fragile", but they're
separated by often-chaotic interludes that feature little of the dazzling musical interplay
that fans had come to expect. "Ritual (Nous Sommes du Soleil)" is the most effective of
the four movements in that it sounds like an actual "band" effort. "The Revealing
Science of God (Dance of the Dawn)" and "The Remembering (High the Memory)"
feature some inspired passages, but these are generally the result of HOWE and
ANDERSON working in unison while the rest of the band lumbers along. CHRIS
SQUIRE's bass is rarely its old acrobatic self, the Fish-like segment in the second half
of "The Remembering" notwithstanding. RICK WAKEMAN is clearly bewildered by what
to do with these arrangements, dabbing at the canvas unsuccessfully throughout. Alan
White's tribal percussion succeeds in a few cameos, including an impressive section
in "Ritual", but the fact remains that BILL BRUFORD would have better balanced the
bandmates' tendencies to go off in their own directions. The album's low point occurs
with "The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun)", a noisy avant-garde experiment that ill
befits the band. While fans, who would follow their once and future kings anywhere,
gave YES the benefit of the doubt, critics of the progressive rock movement found
plenty of ammunition on these two records. As for RICK WAKEMAN, he left to follow his
own white whale on his "Journey to the Centre of the Earth".
daveconn |3/5 |
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