Why is this album so divisive?
bump, i don't know why either
Whereas Close to the Edge was a major success despite having an 18 minute title track and running at only roughly half an hour, Topographic Oceans tried to go above and beyond that with four 20+ minute tracks full of wankery that imo tends to drag on for way too long, but others love it for what it is.
>>66013986
It's disappointing because it arouses the desire for the highest without fulfilling it.
>>66014113
This. No matter how many sides of vinyl you fill with really long songs, you're just not recapture what was present on Close to the Edge. The best way to follow up that album would have been how they follow up the song Close to the Edge on the album. They don't go for an epic, pompous closing track, they go about it with a sense of patience and humbleness. The first thing you hear after the finale of the title track is just a guy tuning his guitar. That's exactly how Yes should have approached the follow up album, by taking a basic approach and gradually building to something amazing and beautiful from there, not by trying to re-channel Close to the Edge out of nowhere. The album Tales From Topographic is almost disrespectful to Close to the Edge.
>>66014369
So kind of like pic related?
If Relayer followed CttE instead of Topographic Oceans it could have made for one hell of a 4-album streak.
>>66013986
I'm a big fan of Yes and think Tales is their second best album. There are a few just plain awful sections of music.
The unaccompanied Howe parts are just not that engaging. He's a fucking brilliant guitarist but making a monophonic solo engaging is not easy and if he was gonna do that sort of thing, he should have pre-composed the shit out of it. He's well able to write pieces for solo guitar but loads of the stuff he plays on Tales sounds improvised and in the unaccompanied parts, it really doesn't work.
Also the weird electronic/percussion solo. The fuck were they even thinking putting that on the album? It is like the epitome of "failed experiment".
The bits on Tales that are good are some of the best music I've ever heard but they should have made it a shorter record if they weren't up to writing 80 mins of genuinely good music.
