The Yes Album

I've not listened intently to albums before this one, but even without listening to them, The Yes Album feels like a band that finally struck gold: epic instrumental passages that radiate confidence with cheerful and joyful singing. All landmarks of a critical moment of everything clicking together. An "Eureka!" moment, if you will.

"Yours Is No Disgrace" and "Starship Troopers" are the main highlights, but an underrated song in my opinion is "Perpetual Change," which showcases the band's elation. It's a grand finale that unites the entire band as one. I can only imagine how the studio must have felt after recording each passage. Probably only a tenth of the joy I experienced while listening to this.

This will never be as cool as the other Starship Troopers

Another album I had to take an adderall to get through. Not a bad album but I simply cannot make it through multiple songs that are longer than 6 minutes.

Season: Early Fall
Favorite Song: Perpetual Change

Second Yes album in less than a month? Only one more to go 🫣

It's prog rock. It's meh. Drawn out with no clear emotional peak. Though it's interesting to see them explore electronic sounds in this album.

So Close.

The replacement of Trevor Rabin by Steve Howe meant the band took a giant leap forward in technical prowess and composition. They moved from the cover song and the 3½ minute pop song into the complex world of prog rock.

Howe's guitar is a wonder, Squire's bass is like a growling animal, Bruford's drumming is nimble - although his Kimf Crimson stint is where he would really shine - but the thing the album shows though is how much Wakeman was needed to launch them into the legend I saturated my ears with in my wasted youth.

The songs themselves are very fine examples of prog rock, but would become monsters when Wakeman joined and took them on tour.

If Close to the Edge and Roundabout are the great Prog Classics then this is like a first draft. Very fine as a starting place, but oh they places they would go.

NICE!
After sludging through another 5 straight ass albums we get to something good.
What Yes brings are elements of what form almost all of my favorite music... time changes, suite style song structures, challenging compositions yet melodic, INCREDIBLY talented musicians (I could fangirl over Bill Bruford all day long).
That being said this is the stepping stone to a more accessible sound but it has its issues as most of their discography in that it is uneven quality wise throughout (sometimes even within the same song).
This is an album that belongs on a list like this.
Solid 4 stars.

Zanimljiva situacija gdje volim svaku pjesmu na albumu ali je Yes imao još jedan bolji album iste godine i onda ovaj djeluje nedovoljno spektakularno u odnosu na ono apsolutno remek-djelo i neke od najboljih prog kompozicija ikad napravljenih pa moram dati manju ocjenu ipak.

Yes!

This was a great album! Musicianship, originality, drama, harmonies! I couldn't ask for too much more. One of my highest endorsements: I listened twice back to back

⭐⭐⭐⭐.49

Forsåvidt behagelig å høre på, men Yes sin flinkisprog virker utrolig tannløs.

Classic. I've seen all good people is amazing.

Well here’s a record that I adored back when I was a super duper Yes-obsessive teen with Yes t-shirts and posters and whatnot everywhere. But bam! one day I realized I had overdone it and couldn’t stand another minute. So I quit listening to *Tales from Topographic Oceans* all the time and haven’t gone near any of it since.

I love complicated music like this, so this is a fun listen. The lyrics are gibberish, though. I mean, I listen to a lot of music with gibberish lyrics, so that shouldn’t be a problem - it’s just that Jon Anderson is so *sincere* about it, which might be what finally put me off this band.

But when he takes a break from singing and the rest of the band lets loose, it’s great.

Clarkson's favorite album.

5.0/5.0

outstanding

For an album that starts with what sounds like a 70s sports program intro this is surprisingly listenable (just), Prog before it got too tedious.

Heavy on melody and mystery played with great musicianship, but still suffers from overly long songs, noodeling and unnecessary changes in pace

Es interesante. Capaz debería reescuchar Fragile, porque este me gustó más. Aunque sí debo admitir que se pone por momentos repetitivo y se hace muy largo, pero está bastante bien.

I was expecting to like this album because I liked Fragile but it was really boring. Maybe it was added to the list as an album with historical value for what was to come for the band.

An absolute classic. Those first moments of Yours is No Disgrace is iconic. Love so much of it, just wish that Sarship Trooper didn't end so abruptly, and A Venture is a little underdeveloped. 4.7/5 -> 5/5

While the first two Yes albums only hinted at the band's potential, they achieved their first of three perfect albums with "The Yes Album". The quantum leap in quality had two reasons: Firstly, the virtuoso Steve Howe replaced the first guitarist Peter Banks, whose angular style did not quite fit the band's concept. Secondly, they found a producer in Eddie Offord who helped create the Yes-typical sound. The band's transformation would be completed on the follow-up, "Fragile", on which the Hammond organ-focused keyboardist Tony Kaye was replaced by the more experimental and much more virtuoso Rick Wakeman. However, even without Wakeman, "The Yes Album" was a milestone in progressive rock. Howe brought not only his musical talent to the band, but also contributed good ideas to the complex compositions. Finally, they abandoned cover versions and dared to create long, expansive compositions. The baroque pop-ish Sixties patina of the first two albums had disappeared. Yes were modern and progressive. The interplay of multi-part vocals and virtuoso passages was celebrated. The album contains two of the band's best-known songs, "Starship Trooper" and "I've Seen All Good People", as well as the fan favourites "Yours Is No Disgrace" and "Perpetual Change", in which, alongside Howe, the rhythm section Squire/Bruford plays at its best. It may be that the two subsequent albums were even better, but that does nothing to diminish the flawless quality of "The Yes Album", an album that defined progressive rock with its exuberance and virtuosity and set the direction for all future masterpieces of the band and the genre as a whole. No matter how much mediocrity and bad music the band will release in their later years (and they will release it), this is an album for the ages.

i liked this fine .. i think yes has better albums probably. i was more familiar with their tracks off of fragile and 90125 before this. my dad loves this stuff and your dad probably does too
big fan of the clap
big fan of the organ moments all over the album
not a big fan of the vocals, i kind of wish it were instrumental

It's a pretty good listen overall. There's plenty of extended jams that run throughout, and there's also a good amount of proggy noodling, but it doesn't sound anywhere near as wanky as a lot of other prog. The good musicianship is allowed to take centre stage without it being ruined by being painfully earnest and generally pretentious. I'm not put-off by the extended length of these tracks.

Don't get me wrong, it's still not 100% my thing, but I enjoyed it well enough and I appreciate the craft and musicianship.

3.5 rounded down