Trollheart

Album title: Fragile
Artist: Yes
Nationality: English
Label: Atlantic
Chronology: Fourth
Grade: A
PA Rating: 4.41
Introduction: If The Yes Album was the one to break the band, then this was the one that enabled them finally to break the USA, taking them to number four there (and seven in the UK) and bringing in the final piece to the puzzle with the addition of Rick Wakeman, a lineup that would take them through the seventies and several more albums. This album also features for the first time the distinctive Yes logo designed by Roger Dean, the cover also created by the artist who would be so linked with the band.
Tracklisting: Roundabout/ Cans and Brahms/ We Have Heaven/ South Side of the Sky/ Five Percent for Nothing/ Long Distance Runaround/ The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)/ Mood for a Day/ Heart of the Sunrise
Comments: Nice acoustic guitar to start off, and “Roundabout” would become a real Yes standard, bopping along nicely with some sweet bass from Chris Squire and Anderson’s distinctive vocal. The keyboards of new boy Rick Wakeman are all over this, sometimes blasting out in trumpeting arpeggios, sometimes just painting subtle soundscapes behind the guitar or vocal, but always there. More of those close harmony vocals Yes would become known for and identified with and by, something few other bands were doing at the time, and which would be taken up by the likes of Queen. Wakeman introduces himself on “Cans and Brahms”, one of two instrumentals on the album in which he gets to show what he can do with one of Brahms’s symphonies. Apparently he was annoyed that he was under contract to his previous record label and could not write any new material.

“We Have Heaven” starts off with a double vocal, one a repeating one which runs behind the main verse, very short but it’s made up for by the seven-minute-plus “South Side of the Sky”, driven very much on Steve Howe’s grinding guitar riffs until Wakeman’s piano comes in and takes the melody, joined later by vocalise from Anderson, Howe and Squire. Guitar then comes back in to take over and fade out the track. Pretty cool I must say. Not so cool is “Five Percent for Nothing”, thirty-odd seconds of bass, drums and a bit of organ, then “Long Distance Runaround” has a nice sort of mid paced tempo but it’s not really much to write home about, I feel, and it’s quite short, as are the next two tracks. “The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)”segues directly into the previous song and is bass and guitar-driven, probably an instrumental though not marked as one, but the next one certainly is. Okay at the very end there’s some sort of vocal from Anderson. “Mood for a Day” is an acoustic guitar number, again quite short and then we’re into the epic closer.

“Heart of the Sunrise” runs for over eleven minutes, making it, I think, the longest Yes song at that point, opening with a characteristic Bruford attack into Wakeman’s lush organ playing, making almost half of the song instrumental before Anderson comes in with a very quiet vocal, almost inaudible or at least discernable, as the song moves briefly into a kind of slow blues style, then Wakeman punches in with the organ again. And so it goes. Yes have yet, at this point, to really wow me, really take all my attention. I personally don’t get the love many of their albums get, and have yet to find a seventies one that does it for me. But no matter what I think, this was the album that finally launched Yes properly on the world, and from here there was never going to be any question of turning back, as the band went from strength to strength, towards the status of prog superstars.

Favourite track(s): I don’t hate anything, but I really don’t like anything enough to single it out.
Least favourite track(s): The Fish (no I'm not writing it all out again!), Five Percent for Nothing
Personal Rating: 3.0
Legacy Rating: 5.0
Final Rating: 4.0

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Trollheart

Album title: The electric Light Orchestra
Artist: Electric Light Orchestra (ELO)
Nationality: English
Label: Jet
Chronology: Debut
Grade: B
PA Rating: 3.63
The Trollheart Factor: 10
Introduction: Hard to see how this led to the classic albums we came to know and love. It’s very much all over the place, but that could be due to the two guys wanting to go in totally different directions. Hardly an auspicious beginning though; even if the seeds were there, they were buried pretty deeply.
Tracklisting: 10528 Overture/ Look at Me Now/ Nellie Takes Her bow/ The Battle of Marston Moor (July 2nd 1644)/ First Movement (Jumping Biz)/ Mister Radio/ Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre)/ Queen of the Hours/ Whisper in the Night
Comments: From the first, it’s always been a point of contention as to whether ELO are considered progressive rock or not. Some of their albums undoubtedly reflect prog credentials, such as 1974’s El Dorado and to some extent Out of the Blue from 1978; others clearly do not. This being their first album I find to be mostly a mix of basic rock-and-roll and some elements of perhaps an ELP-style prog, mixing in classical music ideas into rock and pop, and it’s hard to make a real determination. The opener, “10538 Overture” has enough classical/strings in it to give an idea of prog, sure, and with its look forward to the (very far) future might qualify, or that might work against it, but it’s still a good song on what has to be admitted is mostly a pretty mediocre album, which makes it sometimes hard to understand how ELO managed to attract the kind of attention from a record company that they did, allowing them to get their feet on the road to stardom. That fame would not come easily though, or quickly, as we’ll see.

As for this, well “Look at Me Now” is pure Beatles with a sharp, sort of scraping guitar and maybe cello, not sure, but it’s kind of raw compared to the opener, and you can certainly mark the difference between the vocals of Jeff Lynne (on the opener) and Roy Wood here. Then “Nellie Takes Her Bow” is a piano-driven ballad with Lynne back behind the mike, though there’s a really incongruous jam after the first two or three minutes that for me makes no sense at all and really goes nowhere. Typical of the very disjointed nature of this debut album, as if Wood and Lynne, the two co-founders, were constantly pulling in opposite directions. This tug-of-war for control of the band would result in the former leaving before the next album was released and ELO would forever after be Jeff Lynne’s band.

I mean, they even throw in a bit of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”! What’s that all about? Mind you, poor as this song is, it’s a classic compared to “The Battle of Marston Moor”, which is, well, just a mess. Basically it’s a crazy instrumental which uses I think mostly cello and is quite harsh, with some speech - fighting talk, as it were - at the beginning, giving you the idea of watching a Shakespeare play or something. Bloody awful. “First Movement (Jumping Biz)” is an actual instrumental, on guitar mostly, and borrows heavily from Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas”. It’s alright I guess, but it’s quickly forgotten as we get to “Mr. Radio”, an example of the sort of thing ELO would turn out once they jettisoned Wood (hah! Got rid of the dead Wood?) and stopped fucking around. It’s a lovely little semi-ballad with that aching vocal we would come to associate with Jeff Lynne on such classics as “Telephone Line”, “Don’t Walk Away” and “Turn to Stone”. Worth the price of the album alone.

We’re back to nonsense sub-Waits instrumentals with the marching “Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre)” which sounds like something out of an old sixties cop show or something, I have to admit, much as I’m championing Lynne’s contributions here rather than Wood’s, his final one, “Queen of the Hours” does not impress me; I’m just bored by it. Conversely, the closer, sung and written by Wood, “Whisper in the Night” is one of my favourite early ELO ballads, and it’s a great way to close a really fairly so-so and very unbalanced album.

Favourite track(s): 10538 Overture, Mr. Radio, Whisper in the Night
Least favourite track(s): The Battle of Marston Moor
Personal Rating: 2.0
Legacy Rating: 4.0
Final Rating: 3.0

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018