GOING FOR THE ONE

After excellent Relayer and some years of silence, new album (with Rick Wakeman again) was kind of searching on new ways (or return back to highest class music they played before). Unhappily, their time is gone...

Wakeman being great keyboard player on early Yes albums (and his very few first solo releases) demonstrates there his "other" side - album is full of bombastic simple and "cheap" passages. Anderson sings in a manner he will sing on myriad of his solo albums later - obviously his specific timber, but voice is just a audio-signal, filling the space around. Band, being still in classic line-up, sound too often as back-up team for Wakeman passages and Anderson uninspired singing.

Composition are all simplistic, without jazz-rock feel of previous work, but with some standard tricks, compositions are long and unmemorable. You can easy recognize that it's Yes is playing, but at the same time you are all album-long wonder why music is so flat and tasteless.

Not really jazzy symphonic prog or more heavy variation of some their previous works, but faceless soft polished bombastic music, which happily is still (prog) rock, but obviously shows, what the direction will chosen by band very soon. "Awaken" is still great song on this album though...

First below average release after their stardom, happily great "Drama" still will be released after few years.

My rating is 2,5, rounded to 3.

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