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”