YOU'RE WELCOME

Bands from the 1970s never could've predicted how impossible it would be someday to find anything about them several decades down the road on a search engine due to their generic sounding moniker and even worse album title but i digress before i even begin! Mostly forgotten in the annals of time due to the fact they were dissed as nothing more than a Yes clone, the Swiss band WELCOME created two albums in the latter half of the 1970s before disbanding in 1981. The band's debut WECOME came out in 1976 and this second and last album YOU'RE WELCOME didn't arrive for three more years in 1979.

The self-titled debut basically borrowed all those excellent Yes styles from their early period ranging from "The Yes Album" roughly to "Tales From Topographic Oceans." The band was a mere trio that consisted Tommy Stebel (percussion, acoustic guitar, tubular bells, vocals), Bernie Krauer (electric & grand pianos, organ Mini Moog, Mellotron, vocals ) and Francis Jost (bass, electric & acoustic guitars, tuba, vocals) but managed to sound like a full band in the studio at least. While the debut was quite an interesting display of rearranging classic Yes grooves, riffs and melodies from the early 70s period, on the band's sophomore album YOU'RE WELCOME got toned down a bit sounding more like a watered down version of "Tormato."

Like the debut, YOU'RE WELCOME featured five tracks with a massive sprawling closer that went over 13 minutes and in this case the track "The Whip" squeaked past 17. There was a big difference between 1976 and 1979 in the prog world. Prog was already on a serious decline but some bands managed to convince record labels to release highly complex and creative albums still. However by 1979 the music industry pretty much dropped prog altogether and even the big ticket bands had simplified their style to either fit in the molds of hard rock, AOR or pop. WELCOME was no exception and although this second release is still at the altar of Yes worship, it is a major step down from the decent debut. This one sounds like it has real electric guitar sounds but there are no sources as to who plays what on this one.

Basically everything that made early Yes sound distinct, WELCOME exhibited on its debut which included Squire patented bass grooves, Wakeman fueled keyboards runs and of course those classic vocal harmonies that were quite ubiquitous on "The Yes Album" and "Fragile." The band was also quite creative in its reinterpreted arrangements of the classic Yes sounds and the whole experience is something like listening to a Yes album from another dimension or something. It's like the forgotten album that fell between the cracks however YOU'RE WELCOME is mostly a forgettable prog lite sort of album where everything had been watered down a few notches often sounding like Yes doing a bad job at imitating early Supertramp!

The first four tracks are pretty limp and flounder along like fish flapping on the ground out of water. A big snooze-fest for sure. The tracks still very much sound like Yes but the worst Yes possible as it somehow WELCOME predicted the crap Yes would crank out in the 21st century! The only redeeming track happens to be the 17-minute "The Whip" which also swallows half of the album's length however even this track is more standard and less progressive with the obvious signs of new wave and disco lurking beneath the surface. While not as interesting as anything from the debut album at least the final track goes through various movements and justifies its running time but it was obvious that this band clearly wore out its WELCOME and has been relegated to the forgotten zone if anybody was listening in the first place. Really this band is only worth checking out the debut album. This one is pretty meh but is worth a listen if only for the one true proggy track.

2.5 rounded down