It’s been a long time since the 1970s when Yes were untouchable in delivering an unending master class in high class, inventive and timeless progressive rock.
Albums such as Fragile, Close to the Edge, Relayer, Going for the One etc. remain as standard bearers for the genre.
Drama was a bold statement of reinvention after various upheavals at the time as was 90125 and the Trevor Rabin era in the 1980s.
However for me after Big Generator the wheels fell off with a distinct drop in quality.
Union was terrible and Open Your Eyes from 1997 was so bad I found it unlistenable. That was that with me for Yes and I’d not bough an album of theirs since.
Until now twenty six years later and I thought I’d take a punt on their latest – Mirror to the Sky – after hearing the opening track of Cut from the Stars.
Sounded like “proper” Yes. Proggy, bouncy bass line from the always excellent Billy Sherwood, nice keys, Jon Anderson style vocals from Jon Davison. Very nice. On the back of that I hit the order button for the CD version with the bonus disc.
How I now wish I’d not done that and saved a few quid……
Bar Cut from the Stars it’s a turgid, uninspired, mid-tempo unimaginative, generic borefest of a once great band well past their best going through the motions and barely managing even that.
Of the five other songs, two are nine minutes of mostly twiddling about going nowhere padded out to fill the time.
The title track comes in at a few seconds short of fourteen minutes which after a promising intro is way too long as it noodles about very much outstaying a limited welcome.
Circles of Time I think is unbearable. An acoustic nothingness with Davison’s overblown histrionic vocals very hard to take.
The “bonus disc” is just as bad. Three songs filling in fifteen minutes of nothingness.
Have a listen to Cut from the Stars:
This review is simply my opinion of course. Mirror to the Stars is not for me. I wanted to like it, but I very much do not. The opener is good, the rest bad.
>> YES MIRROR TO THE SKY ON AMAZON <<