[music] YES - Close To The Edge (Rhino) [many listens]

The first time the "aaaah!" is punched in, at the beginning of "Close To The Edge", I was reminded greatly of the Loud Family's Days For Days. It's just one syllable (a pretty common one!) and yet, especially knowing that Scott Miller is a Yes fan...

I prefer this one's structure to Fragile's, but the title track itself left something to be desired. After a few repetitions, its length felt fine; I could turn my attention away and still know where I was in its 20 minutes. I just don't think the melody ever pulls its own weight. One exults mildly when Anderson sings "I get up... I get down", except there's no real payoff afterward. Once I got over the confusion of preferring the shorter pieces on side 2 to the sprawling monster the album was named after, I was okay.

However, I was listening to a friend's copy most of the time. When I got my own, I went for the 2003 remaster on Rhino Records and-- am I going nuts? It sounds way too trebly, with the higher-pitched sounds falling apart, as if they'd been compressed. Every review I can find on the internet, though, just praises the remaster's exceptional sound quality. If I were sure of what I was hearing, of course, I'd trust my own ears over other people's opinions; I'm just worried this means there's something wrong with my speakers. (The difference between the two versions also showed up on my headphones, but those have been making a lot of things sound crappy for a while.)

I hate, hate, hate trying to sort out audio quality problems.