FRAGILE

This is actually the Yes album I'm least familiar with, at least where their masterpieces are concerned. There are two reasons for that. First is that the three most important songs of this album (Roundabout, South Side of the Sky and Heart of the Sunrise) were no secrets for me anymore so I had no curiosity that had to be satisfied here. And the other reason is that I already had the Yes Classics in my collection and first and third of the mentioned songs are to be found on that compilation so that means that I would buy this album just for the second long song and the short songs on Fragile. I never really bothered about those so I never acquired this album.

But now that I've gathered these shorter songs from different sources I'm finally able to review this album. How about it ? Well, of course it's at least very good, the three longer songs are huge classics although in all honesty I have to say I'm completely through with Roundabout. It's their biggest hit in early 70's but because of that and also because the song has been played most on the radio and I know it for over 35 years now I'm afraid I'm done with it. The song hasn't really proved to be tenable to me. I almost can't stand to hear it by now, it's become a bit tedious to be honest.

How about the other two ? South Side of the Sky is much more tenable and simply a better song and composition in my opinion. It's less accessible and due to that less likely to get boring after many listenings. I think it's a typical 4 star song to me. Excellent but not quite of the same masterpiece status as their huge epics. And actually same thing goes for Heart of the Sunrise as far as I'm concerned. Maybe even slightly better. This one never gets boring and is probably in my Yes top 5 songs of all time. Near masterpiece that is. Let's say 4,5*.

The shorter songs are not too exciting I'm afraid. Mood for a Day is a nice acoustic guitar track by Howe on his own. Long Distance Run Around is pretty famous for such a short track and always enjoyable. The Fish is a bit monotonous with also here Howe in leading position this time accompanied by the band. The other three are more like nice intermezzo's but can hardly be masterpieces with such short length. But these short songs almost ruin the high rating for Fragile. After all it's in the end just two out of nine that are truly excellent to me so I could be tempted to give three stars. But that would almost be disrespectful and not really justified either I feel so I will give four but rounded up.