ZapTown

Yes
Magnification
2001 – Beyond

Origin: Birmingham, England
Style: Progressive Rock

So you got through Chris Welch’ Close To The Edge (Omnibus Press, 2000) and maybe you picked up Yesstories: Yes In Their Own Words (Tim Morse and Yes: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) which does a decent job at filling in the gaps.

Welch’ story ends with contemplation by guitarist Steve Howe. The year is 2000 and they just played an unbelievable show at the Royal Albert Hall. Fans got a wide array from the band’s career as Welch paints a picture showcasing that the band can still dip back into their catalog while maintaining authentic diversity all of these years later. For the band themselves, they felt a rejuvenation from the world tour that supported their pre-2000 release The Ladder. Howe talks about the future.

“What will we do next? I guess we’ll still be on the road. It gets tiring but I enjoy it tremendously and there is great joy in what we do. Were still crazy after all these years!” (p. 275).

But as the story continued, Yes did not just continue touring, they went back into the studio to create Magnification, which was released on September 11, 2001.

Despite some critical response to The Ladder as some say it overstepped the life of the band and was disappointing to band members like Anderson, Welch’s story tells something different, something more successful and satisfying to the band . And it’s more common than not that Yes is and always will be a ‘70s band (Conrad Leviston’s review – www.progreviews.com/reviews/display.php?rev=yes=mag and username Bryan’s review on progreviews.com, January 4, 2004, for example. Prog Rock Reviews contain page after page of reviews from various Yes fans and worth skimming through.).

I consider Magnification the Brett Favre syndrome of their career. When Keys To Ascension would have been the high note to end their dynasty, they kept going and going. And when The Ladder was just decent, Magnification is more of the same, just with that Yes twist of trying to morph beyond the possibilities.

Compare Yes of the 21st Century with Yes of the 1970s and you would not recognize the two if it were not for Jon Anderson’s distinctive vocals. Jason Warburg of The Daily Vault notes that the band was so far removed from the mainstream during the making of  this album that they incorporated tactics even unheard of for Yes (http://www.dailyvault.com/toc.php5?review=1804).

Gone are Oliver Wakeman’s keyboards, stripping the band’s sound down to a guitar-bass-drum combination. But to add depth and continue the tradition of not sounding like a traditional rock band, they enlisted a full orchestra.

It’s hard to listen to this album at first. What sounds like Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore” throughout the entire album, Jethro Tull or even Mike Oldfield if you stripped out any electronics, it takes a little time for the ear to adjust and focus on what the band is trying to tell you.

Vocalist Jon Anderson once considered Yes as a crusade (Close To The Edge, p. 3), and that was the staying power of this band. Magnification tries to stay true to the ethics of breaking out of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll phenomena in rock, and forcing the spiritual ethics of the self into it. Most songs exemplify this philosophy, but “Don’t Go” is indicative to the guide of ethics the band developed as they feed off of their own song, building on layers and rolling around in your own imaginative structure.

One thing I can say about Magnification is that beyond the strange fantasies and Anderson’s over-abundant vocals, the musicianship still meets Yes standards as it takes a special degree of talent to be able to keep up and move with the time signature and tempo changes while making it sound so effortless.

An by looking at this album with that in mind, Yes final release is not so bad after all, if not a shame that during a time when people needed positivity in rock the most, this album was not as outspoken as it should have been.

Yes – Don’t Go (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxJXlwtocrY)

Cross-Reference: Alan Parsons, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd