FRAGILE

This is a solid first album for the classic lineup, and the improvement in the keyboard quality is obvious, but to me it's half a great album with a lot of filler. I'm not that big a fan of South Side of the Sky, it's really just a pretty simple song with one nice piano line repeated several times in the middle followed by some vocalizations and then back to the song. Long Distance Runaround is a cool little song with a nifty guitar/bass counterpoint in the intro, but it's mainly a setup for The Fish (which really came alive in concert, giving Squire his chance to shine). So, for me, there are two outright classic songs here: Roundabout (perhaps the ultimate example of a great prog song that charted high, reaching 13 on the Billboard Top 100) and Heart of the Sunrise. The gorgeous classical guitar solo, "Mood for a Day" fills in admirably; less so Wakeman's cheesy take on Brahms or the downright silly We Have Heaven or Five Percent for Nothing. I'm actually almost more of a fan of The Yes Album despite it's lack of keyboard presence. Both are very good albums, setting the stage for the magnificence that is Close to the Edge.