FRAGILE

Contraty to some reviewers here, I don't think that Fragile, as a whole, is as good as The Yes Album and Close To The Edge. Of course it has some great moments, and one of their major hits (Roundabout. During the early 70's everybody who knew Yes was mostly introduced to the band by this song). Unfortunatly the solo spots break the overall concept of the album and tend to distract from the group effords, which are much, very much, better. In fact, only Steve Howe's great acoustic piece Mood For A Day deserved to be included in the album at all, since it is so good it is the only one that survived the test of time. I supposed the rest of the solo tracks were a novelty at the time. But in retrospetive it did no good for the LP.

The group tracks, on the other side, are only classic stuff. And I must agree with reviewers that claim South Side Of The Sky is an very underrated track. The song is simply beautiful and easily one of their best. I loved it since the very first day I heard and the middle section is specially inspired, bringing up some of Wakeman's best piano solo and Anderson, Squire and Howe do their greatest vocal harmony up to then. No need to go to every track, since they are all classics and every fan know them by heart.

A classic album and a must have for any prog fan, indeed. But it could be better if they just the formula used on TYA and CTTE. The group is better than the sum of its parts. Fragile proved that. Yet, a classic.