KEYSTUDIO

Following the Talk tour, both Rabin and Kaye left Yes to pursue other projects. Sans guitar and keyboards, the three remaining members invited Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman to rejoin Yes and resurrect one of the band's classic lineups. This lineup recorded two lengthy new studio tracks, "Be the One" and "That, That Is". Rather than release these tracks as a part of a studio album they were packaged with the live album Keys to Ascension.

Keys to Ascension is a great album. The live material consists solely of their '70s output, and the studio stuff is great too. "Be the One" takes a bit too long to get going, but it's worth the wait. Wakeman finally figured out that farty synth brass is not an enjoyable noise, and Howe's style fits so much better than Rabin's.

The sprawling "That, That Is" opens with an extended acoustic guitar solo from Howe. That shifts to Anderson's babbling vocals, in a manner reminiscent of "We Have Heaven", but that's a brief stopover. The opening verse is tense and high-energy. Squire's bass squirms anxiously as the song plows forward. The suite has a million ideas in it, shifting deftly from one dynamic extreme to another.

After the release of Keys, Yes continued recording new studio material for a new album. Their record label had different ideas and slapped five new studio tracks onto another live album, titled Keys to Ascension 2. Irritated at this move, Wakeman quit the band. For the fourth time.

The five studio tracks on Keys 2 absolutely could have been (and should have been) released as an independent album. Unlike the earlier monstrosities of ABWH and Union, Yes's classic lineup managed to find a way to write music in their classic style without it feeling dated. The suites sprawl and build without meandering, and Anderson's and Squire's vocal harmonies sound much earthier, a huge improvement over the hyper-polished near-chorus that was present on Rabin-era Yes albums. The new studio material on these two albums are on par with much of the band's classic '70s output.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/24/deep-dive-yes/