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MIRROR TO THE SKY

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The downward spiralling guitar riff round about the ‘ice cream’ vocal just doesn’t work for me and its re occurrence in the song spoils the track for me. He praised the well constructed arrangements and some "epic" lyrics in the title track and "Luminosity". I feel like everyone’s focused inward to the greater circle, concentric to the core of highest standards that define YES. Davison’s voice is, as elsewhere on this album, too soft, but the instrumental parts are pretty good.

One other fun discovery: There are several little moments across the album that hearken to other moments in songs across the Yes oeuvre. When the ripples of the water had settled, Dean said that "the lake became a perfect mirror to a very brilliant night sky", an experience that Rogers said was like being in space.Closing track 'Circles of Time' is one I found particularly corny, could have been left out as a bonus track, depending on who you ask. The orchestra plays a great role, one that feels like that's exactly where it belongs and doing exactly what it ought to be doing, and they get their chance to carry the ideas, too. All Connected' is for sure a nod to the years when Jon Anderson was the creative force behind many of the compositions of the band, not a bad track either. Okay, just going to say up front, I am going to digress for a while before I say a word about this album.

Is it a retread of The Quest, which on the surface felt like a bit of a tribute act to past glories? A major update arrived in the March 2023 edition of Prog magazine, which featured an interview with Howe who spoke about the album. Production-wise, this is Steve Howe’s baby, and I can understand his urgent fervor at 76 years of age to assume control and make no compromises regarding his musical legacy as it enters its final stage. Chris Squire was the last remaining of the original members in the band, and he passed away in 2015. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.During instrumental passages, I was silently thrilled to read in the liner notes about exactly which guitars Steve Howe used on each track! s, and thus at time hedged in the direction of "sing-song-y" on the last two albums as well as on tour. Steve Howe finally gets to play a really good, memorable solo that is flashy, smart, and not just a rip-off of one of his earlier compositions. By making a second disc, the band is making a principled artistic statement: disc one is the album and disc two has the bonus tracks. It’s a pretty decent overall album that sees Yes sound like Yes for the first time in quite a while.

His work with Chris in Conspiracy and in Circa -- the two projects of his that I know outside of Yes -- show he's got the chops, voice, vision, creativity, and respect for everything about Yes to play a major role in moving Yes forward.So, 50 years or so since they first recorded, Yes - or at least the 2023 iteration of the group - are back with their latest offering, Mirror To The Sky. And for Mirror to the Sky, this makes sense, because disc one has the unifying thread of the use of a studio orchestra on all six tracks. Yes recorded the album in 2022, with Sherwood and Schellen recording their respective parts in California. Please consider supporting us by giving monthly PayPal donations and help keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.

But Howe is excellent when he does classic Yes background vocals with Billy Sherwood or Chris Squire. Despite my earlier remarks about non-equal footing, this track does in fact achieve entrance into the Yes pantheon. Living Out Their Dream' is a pretty nice highlight, sounds like something that has slipped away from the 'Going for the One' sessions.An early design of the band's logo for the cover featured a colour scheme and texture based on the Nebra sky disc, an artefact from the Early Bronze Age discovered in Germany in 1999 that Howe had suggested to Dean. All Connected comes off a little ordinary to begin with, but there so much to it and now sometimes I go straight to that song first.

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