Fly From Here

One-song based album

Those who like old rock bands are always terrified and petrified with album titles like the one given to the last to date work by Yes. If there is a anything about saying good bye, parting, leaving or breaking up, then the musicians might be hinting this is their swan song. Fly From Here, issued in the summer 2011, was Yes first record made and dropped in ten years. They made their debut CD in the late sixties, and now every new work threatens to be their last. But now, that you can take a look at the track-list of this wonderful prog-rock band’s new offer, fans may release a sigh of relief. Nobody is flying anywhere. Fly From Here is a title to a song, which is the divided into five parts here and stand as the central piece of the whole album. The musicians had this one in their catalogue for many years; they played it live, issued as one big track and as a group of separate songs, and now they dedicate an entire CD to it. Beside Fly From Here, we also have five more songs here, stylistically pretty different, which makes it not an easy thing to decided what album it is closest to.

Prog-rock and other sorts of good music

So, the core of the entire Fly From Here bulk is the title song consisting of five separate tracks and an intro. Together, they last more than twenty minutes and present a sample of supreme progressive rock whose unsurpassed makers Yes have always been. Still, not all bits of Fly From Here comply with this definition. While Sad Night At The Airfield, and Madmen At The Screens are just what the band was making and famous for in the eighties, mixture of guitar and synthesizers with rhythmic ups and downs, Bumpy Ride is a short fusion injection. Genuine progressive rock meets you on the album one more time right at it end, where Into The Storm is located. The other songs have a simpler structure and can be listener to as music in the background. Sweet melodies and relaxing atmosphere make The Man You Always Wanted Me To Be, and Hour Of Need some of those attractive rock songs which takes one listen to like them. Another remarkable piece is the instrumental Solitaire living its own special life beyond the dimensions of styles.

Stylistic contrast and performance beyond abilities

Countless lineup replacements, departures of old and arrivals of new vocalists and main song-writers have never done any harm to Yes music. Today, on Fly From Here we hear tunes and instruments of Drama (1980), 90125 (1983), and Big Generator (1987). They are not just the band’s most standout and commercially profitable records, but works that shaped up Yes style, progressive rock with heavy application of synthesizers. Although the ensemble tried to adjust the music in the course of making later records, they never outdid the predecessors or went sideward far enough to get free of comparisons with them. Having abandoned the studio for ten years, the band returned to deliver Fly From Here, an album built on contrast. Alongside the 100%-Yes basic song, there are less typical themes. What never changes is the sky-high level of performance. Even today, Yes are capable of outplaying, outsinging and outwriting the younger, the bolder and the keener performers.