Yes
Mirror to the Sky

It's incredible! Yes keep losing members along the way, but the quality of their work surprisingly rises! Two years ago, their very first album without Chris Squire came out, and it was a surprising piece of genuine prog like they hadn't done in ages. Then they lost Alan White (the longest-standing member in the band)... and as if by magic, the bar is raised again, albeit with some flaws. They are the indefatigable champions of progressive rock, and not even something as powerful as death stops them (bands like Led Zeppelin and Nirvana folded after just one death). Well, to be honest, it's practically just the name that's been carrying on for 55 years; none of the members from that distant 1968 are still in the lineup (usually in bands, there's always at least one key member who carries the group from start to finish). But also the spirit behind it, the mentality, I wouldn't be surprised if the Yes brand went on forever with new people each time, just like a soccer team. It would be unprecedented in music and might just change the concept of a band forever. In any case, it is fundamentally Steve Howe who still believes in Yes and carries them on his shoulders at the venerable age of 76. He's the only survivor from the band's golden years; he's the wise one who knows how to do it best, keeping them firmly rooted. And he shows no significant signs of fatigue, maybe avoiding diving into real instrumental vortices but beautifully painting the frameworks, creating a perfect symbiosis between complexity and melody.

What makes "Mirror to the Sky" great is essentially the return to giving ample space to long and articulate compositions: two tracks reach 9 minutes, one approaches 14, and one exceeds 8, a suite of timings that hark back to the '70s, as if a band of old-timers wanted to pose as a young and fresh band. The two nine-minute tracks, "All Connected" and "Luminosity," cleverly mix sophisticated arrangements with soft but brilliant melodies, highlighting especially this latter aspect. Howe constructs excellent intertwining riffs and scales but seems almost to want to hide; they are heard well but never sound heavy because everything is in function of the melody, which sounds light and airy. The long title track is a real surprise because I wasn't sure if Yes still knew how to compose a track in the old-fashioned way; this is truly a legacy of better times, almost 14 minutes of instrumental escapades, rhythmic ups and downs, catchy and less demanding parts, and slow and reflective moments. Had we found it on one of their more important albums, there'd really be nothing to say. The same discourse applies to "Unknown Place," where Geoff Downes (not very showy in the rest of the album) brings out old-fashioned organ passages that we could easily attribute to Rick Wakeman, while in the second part we find romantic and classical acoustic parts that seemed to be relegated to oblivion, just as one wouldn't expect that church organ. The sinful mistake was fundamentally placing this gem of old splendor on what is called a "bonus disc"; I'm not sure what this term exactly entails, but such definitions must be handled with care. When you talk about a "bonus disc," you usually mean something secondary, something you don't really consider part of the album, risking that even fans might come to think so. We're far from the real mess that IQ made in 2014; in all honesty, downgrading "Unknown Place" to a secondary track is a crime!

Compositions, therefore, of high quality when the duration is extended... a bit less so when the minutes shorten; there seems to be a certain gap between long and short duration tracks. Not so much for the opening and closing tracks of the main disc: "Circles of Time" is a beautiful slow and acoustic track absolutely worthy of the real Yes. It may not be as pretentious as the others, but it serves its purpose well. The initial "Cut from the Stars" is also more than a good track, with its driving rhythm and overwhelming bassline as its strong points, attempting to imitate "The Ice Bridge" from the previous album, being a scaled-down reproduction, a perfect miniature. It probably is, but the opener of the previous album was superior and more engaging.

The slightly sore notes are something else; "Living Out Their Dream" is a track that is definitively without head or tail, the lowest point of the album, which is instead in the main tracklist, wanting to be a barely sophisticated pop song but lacking both groove and engaging melody, and its instrumental passages seem randomly thrown in to raise its level, failing. "One Second Is Enough" is also weak and negligible pop, but this time there seems to be awareness, so much so that it is on the bonus disc. The additional disc also has "Magic Potion," which, however, has some ideas; it's a roughened and not too driven funk-like track. It's "cute," but from Yes, one doesn't expect "cute" things; it remains a bonus and nothing more.

The fundamental problem is this: Yes would be better off abandoning all pop aspirations. What produced uninspired work in the '90s was precisely this insistence on displaying this type of attitude. They managed to make excellent pop in the '80s, then no more.

These small notes do not alter my perception of the album. Do you remember when I exaggerated by calling "The Quest" their best in forty years? Well, setting aside some negligible episodes, I'd say "Mirror to the Sky" is the best post-Drama, or at least it competes with the previous one or "Magnification." Let's say "The Quest" had fewer missteps and the pop episodes were more successful, but here the bar was raised for the longer compositions. In a somewhat daring way, I would compare it to "Going for the One," sharing the same core concept of being complex, being prog, but not excessively so. In any case, I've fully regained trust in Yes. I, who thought they should have disbanded after "Big Generator," now see that their presence in the prog scene still makes sense.