[music] YES - Fragile

I thought I had given Yes a try at some point-- a favorite musician of mine, Scott Miller, stood up for them years ago, before trends in post-rock made it even slightly fashionable to talk about liking prog. My memory of trying Yes, though, is that I expected them to be kind of like this and was disappointed that they weren't. Even though, clearly, they are!

So, okay, "Cans And Brahms" I can live without. There's one other wholly-instro track ("Mood For A Day") that I kept expecting not to like, as I have no special interest in monochrome acostic-guitar noodling, but didn't mind hearing. The rest is nice! I like the changes, and while some of the individual instruments are VERY cheesy, in combination the novelty totally outweighs the cheese. What lyrics I made out seemed inoffensively stupid (something about an eagle); my impression from hearing people talk is that, if anything, the other lyrics get less sensible while still throwing around new-age tropes, which works for me.

The glosses I saw on prog for years were, "Sure, if you want to hear an 11/8 guitar solo, a synthesized flute, and lyrics about Mars, you could listen to prog." And the arid excess that implied-- look, Ma, my music is hard to play and requires a lot of exegesis!-- had little appeal to me, particularly with the 90s undergrounders who leaned in the direction of 8-minute songs and odd time signatures being so hard to take already.

But this is catchy and elaborate at the same time. It's entirely possible I wouldn't like more DIFFICULT prog. Who knows? As with Zappa, I miss vocals if they're entirely gone but a long song with only little bits of singing at the beginning and end is fine; I actually like the tension that creates.

I'll be thrilled if this leads to my enjoying all those Yes albums that are $2 online or $9 for the remastered version in the discount bin at the record store. I will be less thrilled if I find myself liking "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" at all; that would be the point where the joy of liking something unexpectedly shades into fear that I've just kind of lost my bearings.