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Yes: The Quest

Before I start this review, I want to stipulate a few things. First, I am not one of those people who believe that without Jon Anderson, there is no Yes. Second, I continue to see Yes live, and have missed only a few shows in the last 20 years. Third, I’m glad to finally see a new Yes studio album, after at least six live albums have been released since 2014, the year of their last proper studio album, Heaven & Earth.

I think The Quest is a decent enough album. But is it a good Yes album? No, I don’t think that it is. In my view, there are only a handful of albums in their extensive discography that are worse, the biggest offenders being Big Generator, Open Your Eyes, Heaven & Earth, and Fly from Here: Return Trip, which in my opinion should never have been done. Benoit David did a fine job as a singer on the original album, and Return Trip seemed like merely a vanity project for Trevor Horn, who re-recorded David’s vocals.

There are some good tracks on The Quest. But it is very heavily front-loaded, with the first three songs, “The Ice Bridge,” “Dare to Know” (which benefits from some nicely done orchestral arrangements), and “Minus the Man” being the best. The other five tracks on disc one are not memorable. They are pleasant enough easy listening, but hardly what I expect to appear on a Yes album.

The strongest point of this album are Jon Davison’s vocals. He gets a lot of grief but he is a consistently enjoyable singer, and not just an Anderson clone, which he proves on “Future Memories” and a few other tracks. Steve Howe also adds some fine guitar textures and occasionally some good extended bits. But there is little power behind most of these songs. There are, however, a lot of backing vocals from Howe. That’s a mistake, in my view. His voice simply is not strong. Worse yet, he adds a co-lead vocal on the last track of the second disc, “Damaged World.”

Which gets me to a few other points. Why are there two CDs? The first one is only 48 minutes long. The second one, containing just three tracks, is less than 14 minutes long. There would have been no problem putting those last three tracks on the first CD as bonus songs. One can speculate why Yes it did it this way, but I will refrain from that. To top it off, two of those three tracks, the previously mentioned “Damaged World” and “Mystery Tour,” just are not good. The third, “Sister Sleeping Soul,” is okay and has grown on me somewhat, after more than ten listens to the album.

My second question: Why did Steve Howe produce this album? It’s true that Yes has suffered from some bad producer choices in the past, but they could have done better with a carefully selected outside producer. Surely, we would have received fewer Howe vocals, at least.

There has been much talk of a Yes 2.0 after Howe, who is 74, and drummer Alan White, who is 72 and is really showing his age from playing the most demanding instrument in the band, finally hang it up. Could Yes continue with Davison on vocals, Billy Sherwood on bass, Geoff Downes on keys, Jay Schellen, who already fills in for White for large parts of their live performances, on drums, and a replacement for Howe? Probably, though they might need to soon look for a new keyboard player as well, given that Downes will be 70 next year. The huge Yes fan in me sort of hopes they would keep trudging on in that way. But I think I would rather see a (real) farewell tour, and have them proudly ride off into the sunset after having given us so much great music over the years.

As for a ranking of The Quest, I would give it a 2.5 as a Yes album, but as an album generally, it seems fairer to round it up to a 3.


Track Listing:
CD 1:
1. The Ice Bridge
2. Dare to Know
3. Minus the Man
4. Leave Well Alone
5. The Western Edge
6. Future Memories
7. Music to My Ears
8. A Living Island


CD 2:
1. Sister Sleeping Soul
2. Mystery Tour
3. Damaged World

Added: November 17th 2021
Reviewer: Aaron Steelman
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
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Language: english

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» Reader Comments:

Yes: The Quest
Posted by David on 2021-11-17 21:35:42
My Score:

hi, I think I agree with most of the review, but the part about "why 2 discs?" I can answer.

Steve was asked about it - Inside Out demanded Disc 1 be 43mins long maximum, in case they wanted to release the LP as a single record and make the CD a "bonus disc" incentive.

Frankly, the album woulda been better without the 2nd disc anyway, it wouldn't dilute the 3 fine songs on the album so much.




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