Reaching Behind Boundaries

The key components to every great prog-rock album comprise memorable guitar riffs, punchy immediacy that draws you into the song, ample rhythmic kick, and the imaginative capacity to transport the listener to a place well beyond the confines of reality. Yes’ The Yes Album features all of these rare qualities and more, the 1971 record as significant for saving the band’s career as well as for establishing new parameters in virtuosic technicality and skilled composition. The first set recorded with guitarist Steve Howe, it remains Yes’ grandest achievement and claims a musical vision the British quintet’s contemporaries struggled to match…

Opening with a few bars of Stravinsky to set the adoring crowd on its feet, this once-three-LP set is Yes at their finest. This was, after all, probably the most mainstream act that had even provisional "prog rock" status, and their tunes show it. While "Heart of the Sunrise" may be one of the more modestly titled Yes songs (compare it with "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" or "The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" or even "Total Mass Retain"), it also bears marks of the band playing at its most frenetic pace around Jon Anderson's soaring near-falsetto. Rick Wakeman's grand synthesizer flashes are more than textural, finding visual meshes aplenty with Roger Dean's cryptic cover art–most of which is shrunken or absent on this two-CD reissue…