Yes: Fragile - 1971
This was the group's big commercial breakthrough and prog rock fans (of which there seemed to be loads in 1971) lapped up the extended instrumental innovations as enthusiastically as they grew their hair or wore their Afghan coats.
It is surprisingly heavy at times and also, would you believe, funky. The drums are refreshingly powerful as are many of the guitar chords. You know, I can listen to this. Some bits grate on me, particularly Jon Anderson's high-pitched voice, but you are never far from a good bit coming along - that variety within one song was one of prog rock's redeeming qualities.
The album is built around four substantial songs - the classic multi-styled Roundabout, a track full of all sorts of changes of mood, instrumentation and pace, including some surprisingly heavy riffing and Yes's own particular brand of prog-funk too; the equally inventive South Side Of The Sky (which surely influenced Queen's The Prophet's Song, vocally); the attractively funky Long Distance Runaround and the ten minute heavy sprawl of Heart Of The Sunrise. The latter features some lovely deep, warm bass and Bill Bruford's drums are speaker-shakingly powerful, almost Bonham-esque in their sheer oomph. Rick Wakeman's keyboards are suitably and typically seventies prog madcap, swirling around all over the place like a demented seventeenth-century church organist. Some of the shorter "interludes" are nicely funky - listen to The Fish as an example - but often they end too soon, before they had got going, like Five Per Cent For Nothing.
Mood For The Day features Steve Howe's beautiful Spanish guitar while Cans And Brahms has new pianist-keyboard man Rick Wakeman indulging his classic tastes. I have to say, however, that their short, often incongruous inclusions give the album as a whole a distinct lack of cohesion.
There was a single edit of Roundabout which concentrated on the track's lead riff and its funkier parts, along with the post psychedelic almost CSNY-style vocals. It made for a perfect early seventies psychedelia meets prog single. Fair play to them, it was a good one. I actually really like it. Normally, I prefer the longer, extended versions of songs, but in this case I think the single version has a certain compact appeal.
