Yes-Relayer

It's been ages since I've done a Yes album on here. Let's fix that. Due to the major personality clashes within the band, Rick Wakeman decided to leave Yes after the prior album, Tales from Topographic Oceans, leaving the much more permanent fixtures of Anderson, Howe, Squire, and White to find a new keyboardist. The lucky individual turned out to be Patrick Moraz, a Swiss keyboardist. In 1974, the band created Relayer, yet another album with all of those Yes touches, but with its own little quirks.

This album has a side-long epic on the A side, called "The Gates of Delirium." Anderson supplies lyrics with a lot clearer message than regular, and this track is clearly a war epic. The song starts out with a two minute keyboard workout. Moraz' style is a bit more modest than Wakeman's, but is just as good. Then the vocal comes in, and all of the Yes elements come together in good old fashion. Squire does the best at leaving an impression in here, but they keyboard Bridges do a fine job also. There are many movements during this song, and they all have a 4/4 or 6/4 time signature and similar chord structures, but the melody varies vastly. After about the 8:00 mark, Anderson stops, and the song goes into an instrumental powerhouse. Howe really does the shining here, and his ever adaptable guitar has one of a few career highs here. The style of this section is all about going for a massive wall of sound. At the 15 minute mark, everything screeches to a halt and becomes a slow, "after the battle" type song. This section was originally a separate song called "Soon." Anderson sings some sappy vocals, and it all draws to a close. While it ends with a whimper, the beginning sure is a bang.

Side B has pair of nine-minute tracks, starting with "Sound Chaser", which gets so crazy that it more or less lacks a time signature in parts off the song. The title is apt. The keyboard work here is terrific, and very frenzied. "Sound Chaser" also has a nice bouncy rhythm, and Howe has a very nice guitar solo. The finale is called "To Be Over". This song is much slower in tempo, and is very simplistic. It almost reminds me of a lullaby at parts. There's some tacky 70's production and touches. The musicians don't stand out, and overall this is just not all that good. It fails to live up to the other two tracks on this album.

Relayer is something of a schizophrenic record. Between the chaos of the beginnings of the record sides and the sereneness of the second portions, Relayer struggles to find that consistent grove that can be seen on Close to the Edge or Fragile. However, there is a lot to like here, with a variety of strong players (especially the underrated Moraz, who unfortunately was not a good live keyboardist), just doing what feels right at the time. Each ones gets their fair share of space, and takes their performances to a great level of proficiency. After this album, Yes went on a 3 year hiatus, and all the members released solo albums.

While not the best Yes album out there, Relayer has much to offer and is an album you should have in your Prog collection. Grade: B+