How does any band deal with the pressure of bettering their preceding works? For Yes, the popular opinion held in Fragile may seem too tough a task for the band. But for those left a little lighter for having listened to the Rick Wakeman-featuring piece, Tales from Topographic Oceans may feel like a nod to the Yes of yesterday, to the Time and a Word days where an out-there idea was enveloped in progressive rock fundamentals. The struggles of Yes continue, though with the dated whimsy they showcase, the dud Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch put to song. Opener The Revealing Science of God (Dance of the Dawn) reveals, in title as it did in sound on Fragile, the charmless, tongue-in-cheek messages and gaiety overworked. Four songs of overworked, prog-rock noise. “What happened to this song we once knew so well?” A good question found in Tales from Topographic Oceans, unanswered by the band who posed it.
At least the instrumentals are charming. A wonderful collection of riffs, bangs, and clashes which would become a defining pocket of the prog-rock sound. Yes does very little lyrically but makes up for it with such a convincing tone, a complete understanding of tone, which matters. The trouble with Tales from Topographic Oceans is that there are moments of sheer brilliance mixed in with the inability to shift their tone or style from previous efforts. There is a re-treading of old ground, and far too often does the band get stuck in the mud of their own creation, of an excess which unravels the album. A frustrating band, but a thoroughly fun one. The Remembering (High the Memory) captures this best of all, the earnestness of their lyrical style and the wild, wonderful instrumental style highlighted. About halfway through The Remembering (High the Memory) comes an extraordinary instrumental occasion. This is the closest the band comes to realising the Time and a Word sound which set expectations so high.
From there, it is a dip in form for Yes. The Ancient / Giants Under the Sun is a meandering piece which attempts to pull at the heartstrings a little bit too much. It snaps the very being of the song in two and cannot piece it back together with the soppy instrumentals which underscore those moments of idle, aimless pontification. Yes gives Tales from Topographic Oceans a far softer sound, but it has the maudlin, affectionless notes of their writing style to contend with. There is little in the way of art-rock for their writing style, but it deals with placidities and generalities. Album closer Ritual – Nous sommes du soleil is a collection of thoughts with no narrative, no sense of experience backing the words which flutter between brief analogies of a life well-lived and fortune cookie-like prophecies.
If it were not for the instrumental range, the depths of Yes as a band with an ever-changing sound, it would be hard to engage with Tales from Topographic Oceans. They feel lyrically empty at the best of times and this album is no exception, even with the Autobiography of a Yogi affecting the writing style Steve Howe and frontman Jon Anderson bring to the band. It is an ambitious project which should have, could have, been so much more. Considering the relaxed liberation of the autobiography they adapt, it may feel ironic that Tales from Topographic Oceans is based on the excess of the prog-rock genre. Its failings are not just in the adaptation of the Hindu texts but in the assessment of them in the modern day. There are moments towards the end of the album, too little and too late, of instrumental quality. But Yes has always been a band of moments, rather than of whole projects.
