Well I’ll be buggered! I thought it was next, but it isn’t! This is.
Album title: Fragile
Year: 1971
Personnel: Jon Anderson (Vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Rick Wakeman (Grand piano, Hammond, Mellotron, Minimoog), Bill Bruford (Drums, percussion), Steve Howe (Guitars)
Track by track:
“Roundabout”
What I like about this: Cool intro with some fine gentle guitar from Howe which manages to sound a little Gilmour-like and then gets more sort of medieval in a way as the pace picks up. Good to hear proper keyboards at last.
What I don’t like about this: Nothing really.
“Cans and Brahms”
What I like about this: Nothing
What I don’t like about this: Very indulgent and sounds like church music.
“We Have Heaven”
What I like about this: It’s short
What I don’t like about this: Very annoying: I want to kick him in the nuts just to make him shut up!
“South Side of the Sky”
What I like about this: Nice piano work, vocal harmonies
What I don’t like about this: Opening three minutes or so do nothing for me
“Five Percent for Nothing”
What I like about this: Nothing
What I don’t like about this: Another stupid, indulgent piece of wankery, this time from Squire with a bit of help from Wakeman. Pointless.
“Long Distance Runaround”
What I like about this: Not much
What I don’t like about this: Does nothing for me
“The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)”
What I like about this: Nothing other than the little vocal bit near the end.
What I don’t like about this: Everything; another attempt to show everyone how great Squire is on his bass. Don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but, well, more wank.
“Mood for a Day”
What I like about this: It’s a nice enough little classical guitar piece I guess.
What I don’t like about this: If they can show off, so can I. Sigh.
“Heart of the Sunrise”
What I like about this: Good instrumental intro
What I don’t like about this: Pretty much the rest of it
“We Have Heaven (Reprise)”
What I like about this: Nothing
What I don’t like about this: Everything
Bonus Tracks
“America”
What I like about this: Nothing
What I don’t like about this: Another bloody cover! How can you make a three-minute folk/pop song last ten?? it's overblown, self-indulgent nonsense.
Comments: Ha ha! I’m gonna live! Live, I tells ya! I’m gonna live another day. Another pointless, empty, useless… well, I’m gonna live. I thought
Close to the Edge was next, and have already set my affairs in order, but it seems I have a reprieve. Not sure how I made that mistake, but then, as I’d be the first to admit, I’m no expert on this band. This, then, was their fourth album and their first to feature long-time member Rick Wakeman, who replaced Tony Kaye after the keysman did a Peter Banks, but with electronic keyboards instead of orchestras, shaking his head and wondering what was wrong with an organ or a good old piano as he departed, the rest of the band waving goodbye and shouting “See ya in the charts, grandad” possibly.
Again Steve Howe is stamping his identity on the album from the off, but it’s not long before Wakeman is elbowing him to one side and saying “that wuss Kaye wouldn’t play electronic keyboards? They’re the future, man!” and showing just what he can do, which immediately, to my mind anyway, gives this album a more keys-centric presence than any of the previous two. “Roundabout” is more prog too, a nice uptempo song with plenty of arpeggios and a catchy beat, which ended up making it one of Yes’s best-known songs. The guitar riff here would later be used by Howe on the debut Asia album, in the song “Time and Time Again”, and I hear less vocal harmonies here initially, though they do some in there around the midpoint. Shades of “Can-Utility and the Coastliners” here too.
Wakeman then has his first solo composition, a short instrumental which allows him to indulge his love of classical music, based as it is on a Brahms melody, though to be honest and fair it’s not really that great is it? Sounds sort of like something you’d hear in a church at a wedding maybe. Comes across as really indulgent, but then, that would be one of the accusations levelled at Yes, and other prog bands, and the accusers would not be wrong. Another short one in an Anderson-solo-penned song, “We Have Heaven” which has a very annoying rapidly-repeating line in it and doesn’t do anything for me at all I’m afraid, but at least it’s short enough to be over before I have to say “Shut the **** up Jon!” And we’re into “Southside of the Sky”, which seems to display that bugbear for me with this band: I just can’t get my head interested in it and it seems to just ramble on and on without any real structure I can see. Oh wait: stopping now with a nice slow piano melody. That’s something.
Some close-harmony singing now which does help to put more of a shape on the song, as the piano keeps the melody, though it’s getting harder and more insistent now, but then the vocals fade out and it’s just Wakeman and a sort of classical piano line, then wind effects and it’s like a reprise of the opening minutes, which sort of bookends the track, for me, with two poor sections and allows it to finish badly. It’s kind of Howe’s somewhat histrionic playing that ruins it for me, just as I was beginning to like it. Would have been better leaving Wakeman in control. Then we get another pointless piece of showoffery from Squire on “Five Percent for Nothing”, which to me is just nonsense, the next three all short and written respectively by Anderson, Squire and Howe solo, so you know what to expect. Anderson’s is “Long Distance Runaround” and is a bouncy little ditty with a sort of staggered melody line, while the crazily-named “The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)” is of course a vehicle for Squire to wank all over his bass, and wanker supreme Steve Howe gets “Mood for a Day”, unsurprisingly demonstrating his skill on the guitar.
We finally get to grips with a proper track on the longest, ten minutes plus of “Heart of the Sunrise”, a big powerful instrumental intro which takes us into the third minute before Anderson’s vocal comes in very low and quiet, and I guess for a ten-minute track it goes in pretty quickly, though again much of it passes me by. I always felt that Yes, to me, made more about creating instrumental sections without making any memorable melodies. Probably just me, but very little from this album has stuck with me, and I include your precious “Roundabout” in that. I simply could not sing one of the tracks here if my life depended on it. To me, this is more an album of people - undeniably talented musicians, but that doesn't excuse or justify it - showing how clever and talented they are, without too much regard for actual songs.
This album was the first whose cover was designed by Roger Dean, who would become as synonymous with Yes as Derek Riggs was with Iron Maiden or Mark Wilkinson with Marillion. He also designed the now iconic and still used logo for the band.
Rating: 4/10
Yes or No? No
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hE7HZCVVRU