New Yes Should Be Titled “Please Don’t Bother.”

I was going to write an in depth review of the new release from prog rock gods, Yes. Alas, it is too terrible to inflict on my loyal audience. The new album, From a Page, is very much in the prog rock tradition of adding a few new songs to live cuts from the past when the new stuff is a bit sparse or just terrible. And there you have it: this is what From a Page is all about.

The best words that describe the new songs are trite and sappy. It’s as if someone meant to compose the soundtrack for “Frozen 3: We’re Just Phoning It In” but it turned out too saccharin sweet even for Disney. There are many live Yes albums from their height in the 70s and 80s and, hence, no reason to listen to additional concert recordings.

From a Page makes no sense. Marrying bad new songs with lackluster performances of old ones is not a winning solution. The combination of old songs done poorly and terrible new songs only acts to remind us of what has become of this storied group. Please, if you value your time, ignore this album. If you value what Yes used to be, listen to almost any other of their albums from their inception to 1983’s 90215. Seriously, listen to even Union or Big Generator before wasting your time on this dreck.

I don’t know if it’s because the band is hardly composed of any original members. Perhaps it’s that the ones that are original are in their 70s. It may be because they are finding their lead singers in Yes cover bands these days. Who cares. This album sucks and it’s clearly time to retire the band. Seriously, From a Page is not worth the network bandwidth to stream it.