OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW

When all Yes members released solo-albums back in the mid-1970s I got a copy of each, with the exception of Alan White's RAMSHACKLED. I played them as often as I would have played any Yes album, but in the 1980s for some reason I felt embarrassed that I owned them, so I got rid of Steve Howe's BEGINNINGS, Chris Squire's FISH OUT OF WATER and Patrick Moraz' THE STORY OF I. The only one I hung on to was OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW, mainly because it featured the most spectacular gatefold sleeve, with illustrations by Dave Fairbrother Roe. His colourful drawings looked like Arthur Rackham fairy tales, something which - even in 1976 - I did not exactly find cool, but I thought: "This is unique, I really should preserve this, just to show my children later!" However, soon record players went out of fashion, and I never acquired an OLIAS CD. As a consequence, I believe I never listened to the album from the early 1980s until just a few weeks ago (early March, 2023).

Rediscovering my old OLIAS L.P. was a pleasant surprise. In contrast to FISH OUT OF WATER, which I find terribly overblown (not to mention the fact that I can't stand Chris Squire's bleating), and BEGINNINGS, half of which is completely unlistenable (mainly because of Steve Howe's vocals and execrable lyrics), good ole' Jon Anderson's solo debut sounded incredibly fresh and reinvigorating. I immediately bought the 2021 Cherry Red Records CD reissue to find out why this was so. (And no, I'm not in the pay of Cherry Red Records!) I found that our Jon wrote at least a couple of songs which are as catchy as anything Yes ever did - most notably 'Sound Out the Galleon' and 'The Flight of the Moorglade'. Even though he's anything but a virtuoso on drums, synths, guitars or harp, he also painstakingly created a number of instrumentals which are very pleasant to the ear. He came up with a number of chants ('canons' or 'rounds' I guess you could call them) which are similar in spirit to Yes's 'We Have Heaven' but far subtler in execution. And finally, he took great care to devise keyboards/harp/percussion/backing vocals arrangements for the entire album. As a result, OLIAS really is a rich and rewarding listening experience. I guess it helps that Anderson did the whole thing at home on his own (with only a sound technician to assist him), so there was no band he had to struggle with. He ended up singing most of the new songs fairly low in his register, which makes them easier to bear than GOING FOR THE ONE or TORMATO, both of which sound far too shrill to my taste.

Of course you'll need some suspension of disbelief to fully embrace a J.A. solo album. After all, this is a man who writes lines such as 'Total relating appointed close factors / of what we regard as the answer lies there' without any sense of embarrassment. One or two of his wordless vocals are perhaps a little soppy as well - New Age avant-la-lettre. Furthermore, the SF/fantasy/fairy-tale concept he devised seems half-baked at best. But the sheer loveliness of most of his tunes and - dare I say it - the majesty of his best instrumental movements make up for any deficiencies.

In my view, there was only one mid-seventies Yes member whose solo achievement came close to Anderson's: Patrick Moraz, with his highly eccentric THE STORY OF I. And for the sake of completeness it's only fair to add that both of them were solidly beaten just two years later, by the first solo effort from ex Yes member Bill Bruford: FEELS GOOD TO ME.