Acoustic Guitar Tribute to Yes- Acoustic Sessions

1) I've Seen All the Good Time 2) Heart of the Sunrise 3) Love Will Find A Way 4) Sound Chaser 5) Six Wives of Henry 8 6) All Good People 7) The Clap 8) White Car 9) Shoot High Aim Low 10) And You and I 11) I'm Alive 12) Machine Messiah 13) I'm Running 14) Your Move 15) Long Distance Runaround 16) Owner of a Lonely Heart 17) Holy Lamb 18) Starship Trooper 19) Our Song 20) Almost Like Love 21) Silent Spring 22) Roundabout 

Okay so this review was supposed to be in tribute to the recent death of Chris Squire but I’m not sure what type of tribute this will be, considering this might be the worst fucking album (figuratively, though even more so literally) I’ve ever heard.

To clarify, I would love to hear an acoustic tribute album to Yes. To clarify my clarification this is no such tribute album. The whole thing is synthesized! And there’s drum machines! Alright when I was 12 I got this cheap midi keyboard from a charity shop which could crudely synthesize other instruments. The sound in this album still sounds quite superior but it has the same fake mechanical feel. If I was lucky this is solely what I’d get- which shows my low opinion on luck- but in addition to that on certain songs these horrendous sound effects show up, like a jammed printer, or a group of avant-garde musicians jamming together with printers.

Oh and it’s two hours. Two hours of crappily synthesized pseudo-muzak.

However I do not want this review to be another hatespew like The Beatles Barkers so I will make some cursory observations. Okay so one of the things that I found appealing about Yes is missing here. That was the way the instruments would interact with each other, forming almost a dialogue. Now I honestly think with some effort this could have been re-created but rather than various acoustic guitars with different tones and timbres reacting to each other there’s two lifeless fake acoustic guitars playing different melodies with a drum machine underneath that sounds like it was programmed as music for robots to sleep to. Sometimes the ‘acoustic guitars’ sound like harpsichords. Maybe they changed the concept of the album halfway through.

Secondly the album doesn’t really have a mood. I could use the word laconic but I consider myself laconic and have no wish to compare myself with this album. It’s just so dull and lifeless. It’s soulless, it feels almost nihilistic, like no human being made this. To continue the robot theme- for my book of robot themed rock reviews- it sounds like a computer was fed a bunch of Yes albums and made to re-create them. Oh and it’s a broken computer and the CDs are scratched.

Okay I’ve lapsed into hatespew again. Allow me one histrionic declaration and I will continue the rest of the review properly. Alright:

THIS ALBUM IS THE SOUND OF THE UNIVERSE’S HEART BEING BROKEN.

Okay, now to concentrate on some individual songs. For the most part that’s pretty impossible. They all sound the same. Personally I find Yes to have been excellent melodicists so the album does contain the beautiful Yes melodies but in such an amoral form. This is the album that a misanthropic ex-hippie army would march to. It’s uniform. However some songs can be commented on. There’s three versions of I’ve Seen All Good People, the first one called I’ve Seen All The Good Time the second All Good People and the third Your Move. Did I say three versions? Sorry they’re actually the same song. Half of Big Generator is featured on this! Half!

One positive thing. There’s actually a semi-semi-semi almost kind of somewhat decentish cover of Machine Messiah. For the first half it almost manages to preserve the creepy mood of the original whilst retaining the eerie mechanic laidback vibe of the rest of the album, creating something of a contrast. It’s still awful though.

I can’t remember which but one of the songs me and Franco compared to video game music. The type of game it would accompany would be one where you’d have to feed a dragon every five seconds and that’s literally all the game was. No progression. You’re feeding it screaming fruit and the graphics are awful 3D with a black background. If you fail to feed it you go back to the beginning, no saves.

Um….more insights? Sure. Who the hell was this album made for? The lack of effort suggests the amount of passion a teetotaller would have for Oktoberfest but at the same time there’s no commercial appeal either. So really what’s the point?

Alright that’s it, I’m going to end this by quoting some of the more entertaining things I said to Franco on Facebook:

Here's my impression of this album: "hey, fuck you!" 

The whole album is like a placid, calm river of blood. 

This album is consistently....."um".......
This album is like being forced at gunpoint to read a book which is just the word teeth for one thousand pages and sometimes it's spelt wrong (paraphrased because at this point I'd lost interest in grammar).  

And now from a discussion of how this album could have been good with acoustic guitars and effort here’s the wisdom of Mr. Micale:

“BUT NO THEY DECIDED TO BE FUCKWARDS AND DO THIS PIECE OF SHIT FOR NO REASON GAAAHHH FUCK THEM FUCK THEM FUCK THEM” 

Symphonic Music of Yes

1) Roundabout 2) Close To The Edge 3) Wonderous Stories 4) I've Seen All Good People 5) Mood For a Day 6) Owner Of A Lonely Heart 7) Survival 8) Heart Of The Sunrise 9) Soon 10) Starship Tropper

(This and Jonathan Moss's review is dedicated to Chris Squire, bassist of Yes. His style was innovative and inventive, and he was a lot more influential than many give him credit for. May he rest in peace.)

This was a difficult album to review, because it took me a while to form my final opinion on it. First off, unlike most tribute albums, some of the members of Yes were actually involved in this album, with Steve Howe contributing to the guitar, Bill Bruford playing the drums, and Jon Anderson singing lead vocals on a few of the tracks. Second off, this album strikes me as a great idea that misses the mark of being well executed.

See, I don’t hate it, as I found the orchestra to sound gorgeous, and I can tell that sizable amount of effort was put into it. However, I can’t really like this much either, because it’s not like David Palmer really does anything different to the songs. For almost all the tracks, all that Palmer seems to do is replace certain parts of the song with orchestration, with the original rock instrumentation still remains intact. This bothers me, because if the idea was to make Yes sound like symphonic music, then this album to me was a failure, because the mixture of the rock instrumentation and the orchestra just doesn’t seem to blend in at all. It’s like there are two different styles going on at the same time, and they don’t seem to be interacting or supporting each other at all.


For example, let me focus on Close To The Edge. They don't anything to ruin this masterpiece, but it's difficult for me to think of a reason why I would listen to this version as opposed to the original. The orchestra doesn't add or take away anything from the piece, it's just there. The moment when the song gets into the mellowed down, soft atmospheric section in the middle, the orchestration suddenly slips right in perfectly, and it becomes absolutely beautiful, but aside from that, nothing really stands out.

That's more or less the entire album. Some interesting moments here and there, but overall nothing really grabs my attention. I like how Owner Of A Lonely Heart incorporates those quirky samples from the original into orchestration, and the first section of Survival does a good job at making the melody fit well into the symphony,  but the female harmonies in the chorus don't fit in and sound right. I could go on and on about how each song is done, but the style is so similar from one another that I can't really think of anything else to say. I mean, I could talk about Jon Andedsons appearances, but is there to say? Yeah, he does take the lead vocals on Roundabout, but other than the orchestration, it's not like the song is any different from the original, so it's really no big deal. I also find myself questioning the decision to use the second section of "I've Seen All Good People" instead of the first. I feels weird to hear a symphonic arrangement of the rocking section of the song, and the first section seem like it would have been much better suited for a symphonic arrangement, but whatever, their decision I guess. I also don't like how they added rock drums to Wondrous Stories, since first off, this piece never had any to begin with, and second off, without them, this could have easily been a highlight, since I always felt that Wondrous Stories always sounded dreamily symphonic to begin with.

There is an exception though to all of this though. Of these ten tracks, I would say the one that sticks out the most for me is Mood For A Day. I just LOVE how the orchestra plays along and interacts with the guitar, making it sound completely natural and comfortably fit in. It adds quite a bit to the piece, and I would recommend that every Yes fan hear this.

But, really, aside from that, the only other piece that sticks out is Soon…ugh, what do that I say about that one? You'd think that this piece would be MADE for a beautiful orchestral arrangement, since it already had a lush and symphonic atmosphere to begin with, but this version has so little cohesion that I feel no one really knew what they doing with this. I’m not able to tell whether they wanted it to be a straightforward rendition, or if they wanted to make it sound like a soundtrack written by John Williams. The strings at moments just sound REALLY over the top and sentimental, and ahhh, I just don’t like the acoustic guitar that takes over the lead melody. It sounds too plucky and feels out of place of everything else. Gosh darn it guys, this could have easily been a great rendition, how could you have messed it up so badly? Ah, damn it.

So, in conclusion, I have finally decided my opinion on this, and I believe that this is simply not a very good album. I actually really want to recommend this to at least someone, since there seemed to have been hard work put into it, and the band themselves are pretty involved in this...but it's a challenge for me to figure who I would recommend this to. Guitars, bass, and drums are STILL very present, so it's not really a full scale symphonic tribute, and the arrangements stick too much to the original to really make an impact towards anyone. The end result is a mixture of ingredients that don't blend well together, and that's too bad because I could have seen this working quite well if maybe the album was done slightly differently. Like, for example, maybe they should have just done a straight up symphonic album, with no rock instrumentation. I personally think that would have sounded COOL. But, anyways, if you really want an album that blends orchestration with the music of Yes, and does it well, go get Symphonic Live. On the other hand, I still highly recommend you check out the wonderful version of "Mood For A Day", and Jonathan DID like this album more than me...so I guess it wouldn't hurt for you to check this out if you are a Yes fan. Who knows, maybe you'll like this album.

When all is said and done, it could be MUCH worse. Go read Jonathan's review.