FRAGILE

Yes

Symphonic Prog

4.46 | 4050 ratings

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Easy Livin
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

"Tell the moon-dog, tell the march-hare, we have heaven"

I have always felt this was a slightly disappointing Yes album. Sandwiched as it was between their first real classic album ("The Yes album"), and their finest hour ("Close to the edge"), "Fragile" found the band momentarily over confident and self indulgent.

Musically, the band did not really progress from the great strides they had taken with the Yes album, the band tracks here representing more of the same. If anything, they took a step sideways or even backwards. A number of the tracks such as "Roundabout" and "Long distance runaround" being fairly basic commercial pieces, more in tune with "All good people" than say "Yours is no disgrace". These compositions are highly melodic and catchy, and while highly enjoyable, they are lacking in real depth.

"Heart of the sunrise" stands proud alongside tracks such as "Siberia Khatru", and "Yours is no disgrace" as one of Yes' best pieces. It is a highly structured piece with soft and loud segments, and some fine instrumental work. It is by far the most progressive, and probably the best, track on the album. The other band track here is "South side of the sky", which sounded great on their recent tours, but is in reality only an average album track.

Other than these tracks, the album does have a fair bit of padding in the form of solo tracks by the individual band members. In retrospect, allowing each member a solo slot was self indulgent and unnecessary. The space could have been put to far better use through the addition of another band track, or even the inclusion of their non-album cover version of Simon and Garfunkel's "America".

A good album, but something of a lull between the greats.

The recently remastered version of the CD has a number of bonus tracks, plus some lavish packaging with informative sleeve notes.

Easy Livin | 4/5 | 2004-5-5

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