YES
Re-issued alongside ‘Open Your Eyes’, Yes’ seventeenth studio album, is the band’s follow-up full-lengther, ‘The Ladder’. As with ‘Open Your Eyes’, this is also billed as a “deluxe Collector’s Edition CD”, although we’re talking about a standard digipak again here, but this time with a fold-out poster, with lyrics on one side and a picture on the other. I’m still struggling to spot anything that could be construed as “deluxe”, though.
Originally released in 1999, it featured the same lineup as its predecessor - Jon Anderson; Steve Howe; Billy Sherwood; Chris Squire; Alan White - but with the addition of Igor Khoroshev on keys, with Sherwood shifting to guitar. Khoroshev had actually contributed keys to a small handful of tracks on ‘Open Your Eyes’, but apparently became a full-time, permanent member by the time this album was recorded. The resulting work is a less-rounded effort than its predecessor; something of a mixed bag. Some very welcome world music influences, generally proggier in places, and some overt cheese that sounds hideously dated now.
I guess my 2020 opinion, hearing the album for the first time, differs from general opinion of the day. Making the UK album charts, it seems this one was a far better received and more popular outing than ‘Open Your Eyes’… and, dare I say, that must be due in no small part to Yes’ more emphatic return to their prog rock roots, with many passages coloured with instrumental widdle; notably via the keys (not all the way through the album, I hasten to add, just more so than on ‘Open Your Eyes’). It’s evidently what the fans had missed, and Yes were delivering more of what they were always loved for. The proggy passages are less subtle here, and certainly at the forefront; dominating rather than strengthening some of the compositions. And there’s some inexcusable cheese to be heard on this one, with the likes of ‘If Only You Knew’ providing a cringe-inducing moment of what sounds like it would’ve been heavily anachronistic in late 90s; like a mid-80s crooning Chris De Burgh piece.
I’ll probably be in a minority for saying this, but ‘Open Your Eyes’ is indubitably the stronger of the two albums, and holds up significantly better today than ‘The Ladder’. Yes’ eighteenth studio record has its moments, and is generally an enjoyable enough listen if you can get over the cheese and superfluous moments of widdle, but I will most certainly be returning to ‘Open Your Eyes’ before this one. Their seventeenth showed promise of the band progressing further by refreshingly not adhering to some of the prog clichés they’d helped invent decades earlier; whereas their eighteenth is certainly more regressive.
Originally released in 1999, it featured the same lineup as its predecessor - Jon Anderson; Steve Howe; Billy Sherwood; Chris Squire; Alan White - but with the addition of Igor Khoroshev on keys, with Sherwood shifting to guitar. Khoroshev had actually contributed keys to a small handful of tracks on ‘Open Your Eyes’, but apparently became a full-time, permanent member by the time this album was recorded. The resulting work is a less-rounded effort than its predecessor; something of a mixed bag. Some very welcome world music influences, generally proggier in places, and some overt cheese that sounds hideously dated now.
I guess my 2020 opinion, hearing the album for the first time, differs from general opinion of the day. Making the UK album charts, it seems this one was a far better received and more popular outing than ‘Open Your Eyes’… and, dare I say, that must be due in no small part to Yes’ more emphatic return to their prog rock roots, with many passages coloured with instrumental widdle; notably via the keys (not all the way through the album, I hasten to add, just more so than on ‘Open Your Eyes’). It’s evidently what the fans had missed, and Yes were delivering more of what they were always loved for. The proggy passages are less subtle here, and certainly at the forefront; dominating rather than strengthening some of the compositions. And there’s some inexcusable cheese to be heard on this one, with the likes of ‘If Only You Knew’ providing a cringe-inducing moment of what sounds like it would’ve been heavily anachronistic in late 90s; like a mid-80s crooning Chris De Burgh piece.
I’ll probably be in a minority for saying this, but ‘Open Your Eyes’ is indubitably the stronger of the two albums, and holds up significantly better today than ‘The Ladder’. Yes’ eighteenth studio record has its moments, and is generally an enjoyable enough listen if you can get over the cheese and superfluous moments of widdle, but I will most certainly be returning to ‘Open Your Eyes’ before this one. Their seventeenth showed promise of the band progressing further by refreshingly not adhering to some of the prog clichés they’d helped invent decades earlier; whereas their eighteenth is certainly more regressive.
LABEL:
FORMAT:
earMUSIC Classics
Album
THE LADDER
Review by Mark Holmes
RUNNING TIME:
60:26
RELEASE DATE:
20th March 2020
TRACK LISTING
1) Homeworld (The Ladder)
2) It Will Be a Good Day
3) Lightning Strikes
4) Can I?
5) Face to Face
6) If Only You Knew
7) To Be Alive (Hep Yadda)
8) Finally
9) The Messenger
10) New Language
11) Nine Voices (Longwalker)
2) It Will Be a Good Day
3) Lightning Strikes
4) Can I?
5) Face to Face
6) If Only You Knew
7) To Be Alive (Hep Yadda)
8) Finally
9) The Messenger
10) New Language
11) Nine Voices (Longwalker)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:
UK
"...there’s some inexcusable cheese to be heard on this one, with the likes of ‘If Only You Knew’ providing a cringe-inducing moment of what sounds like it would’ve been heavily anachronistic in late 90s; like a mid-80s crooning Chris De Burgh piece."
