90125

After really strong "Drama" album, released as Yes, but with very renewed line-up, "90125" is kind of return to " more classic" line up but with strong changes in musical direction.

Anderson is on board, as well as Squire and White, so in big part this album is still Yes. Music played is melodic keyboards-based AOR, well played and arranged. Few songs has some progressive smell, others - not too much. In fact, sound you hear there is very characteristic and successful for early 80-s Asia-like well arranged pop-rock.

There are myriads of critics for this album, and I really can agree with many of them. It's really far not the flagman of symphonic prog from 70-s. But I don't think this album is extremely bad - musicianship is very competent, arrangements professional, and musical material, even if danceable and mellow in moments, is still of high quality (ok - high quality pop-rock).

It's difficult to compare that album with best Yes works from 70-s, but comparing with many bands prog releases from 80-s (and even more - comparing with many clones neo-prog bands from 90-s), this album is still sounds as very quality release.

My rating is 2,5,rounded to 3.