Yes
Tormato

THE REVIEW

Every great rock group has had to go through a not-so-lucky phase marked by lack of inspiration, overly smooth musicality, decadent style, creative fatigue, internal cliques among band members, poor arrangements, confused ideas, silly lyrics. Even if the group is called Yes.

How can this happen to one of the multinationals of cultured prog-rock? The fashion of the moment. It’s that terrible 1978 that serves as a turning point for them and for a much better future to come. They took three years after Relayer in 1974 to indulge their solo cravings. Wakeman returns to the keyboards. After the excellent Going for the One in '77 and the glorious tour, not even a year passes before "Tormato" is found in stores.
Beautiful and printed with telling signs on the cover. Rick Wakeman will disappear after this work until 1996 for a temporary reunion tour and again in 2004. It is the worst Yes album ever. To be picked up last and out of curiosity. It can be listened to once or twice at most. Dust will be its best friend. It's easily forgotten. It’s difficult to give it a characterization. The lyrics talk about science fiction, saving the whales, the UFOs are coming, the silent wings of freedom. Quite a mess and the music is even worse.

What leaves one baffled are the arrangements, horrible. They use semi-vocoders on Anderson to give that much-adopted sci-fi disco feel, the keyboards sound like toys, Howe's guitars doodle here and there, Squire plays too loud and often drowns out the others, Alan White still manages to give rhythm to all this. In short, they attempt to put space and fantasy into their musical icon. It was better not to. In fact, the Yes themselves have stated that the band at that time was unrecognizable. Studio arguments, repeated moments of fatigue. A difficult and useless delivery. Squire is in complete disagreement with the stylistic line taken. He already had "Drama" in his sights. Fortunately.
Is anything salvageable? mmmmmh.... "Madrigal" with the barely-there harpsichord, "Arriving UFO" a copy of "Relayer" at times, the single "Don't Kill the Whale" slightly interesting, when the keyboard solo arrives you feel like smashing the player, "On the Silent Wings of Freedom" has a good Squire-driven "Dramesque" instrumental intro. Howe finally starts playing a bit, Anderson then sings over it but is completely unnecessary. Even this is ruined.

On "Circus of Heaven" Anderson's son, Damion, performs. All it needed was the Zecchino d'Oro. The other tracks make you work the remote as hard as you can to skip them. For this review, I had to re-listen a bit. My day is ruined. Warning to all: avoid buying it first. Fortunately, there is much more to listen to before and after. It's a collector's whim. In the end, trust me on this. The only thing they got right was the cover: a nice tomato splat on Yes's nice dress. Then fortunately cleaned up properly.
Joe Cavalli