Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Yes
Label: Yes 97 LLC
Release: 2018
Length: 53:37
Rating: 3/5
When the odd news first broke, even with the best will in the world you couldn’t figure out what bit the members of English prog rock legends Yes, making them re-record their 2011 album »Fly From Here« instead of busying themselves with more productive and sensible things, like reading fairy tales to the grandkids or watering the summer cauliflower and peppers. The whole thing is a near-perfect rerun of what we’ve already heard, with two important differences: for the occasion, Canadian singer Benoit David was replaced on lead vocals by a former member, the esteemed singer and producer Trevor Horn, which meant an unexpected, short-lived reunion of the »Drama« (1980) lineup, while »Don’t Take No For an Answer« is an old-new song that wasn’t on the original version of »Fly From Here«.
This needless idea was cooked up by drummer Alan White, who wanted a one-off reunion of the »Drama« crew, without the late bass genius Chris Squire in person, of course, but with recordings of his bass lines, backing vocals and the lead vocal on »The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be«. White simply wanted to hear how the »Fly From Here« songs would sound with Horn’s vocal take.
Horn is still a superb singer with that distinctive tone he wowed people with back in the ‘old days’, on the Yes classic »Drama« and in the brief spell when he and keyboard heavyweight Geoff Downes ran the successful art pop rock outfit The Buggles. His voice has dropped only a touch over the years, and he’s still a proper ‘sweet-singing nightingale’, kin to original Yes vocalist Jon Anderson. Plenty of the songs with Horn, who reworked some of the original arrangements to suit his voice, come out better than with David, especially the five-part title saga and »Hour of Need«, which has finally come out in full, just as it was originally conceived. Guitar champion Steve Howe, who’s been less and less innovative in recent years, and Downes also re-recorded quite a few guitar and keyboard parts. The aforementioned »Don’t Take No For an Answer«, which could have been a thoroughly decent effort, gets wrecked by the fact that its lead vocalist is, for reasons still unexplained, Howe, who has ‘been famous’ for years as an awful lead singer, and this time is no different.
»Fly From Here – Return Trip« is a thoroughly superfluous project, and its one real standout is Horn’s still remarkably well-preserved voice, which gives it a slight quality edge over the pretty average original. That’s no surprise at all, since Horn was one of the central writers on most of the »Fly From Here« compositions, which started life as demos in the early eighties for a potential second »Drama«-era Yes album, and were written with his vocal approach in mind. The improvement over the original »Fly From Here« is noticeable all the same, and most Yes fans will probably now reach for the ‘upgraded’ version, if they ever get the urge to spin this average album from Yes’s rich studio vault. At the same time, you have to wonder why Yes didn’t talk Horn, who’s pretty beloved among most fans, into handling lead vocals back in 2011 instead of the not-so-well-received David, who surely didn’t deserve that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4iDzO2ZJfo
Lineup
Trevor Horn – vocals, backing vocals, keyboards, acoustic guitar (3)
Steve Howe – guitar, backing vocals
Chris Squire – bass guitar, backing vocals
Geoff Downes – keyboards
Alan White – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Oliver Wakeman – keyboards (2,6,9)
Gerard Johnson – piano (7)
Luis Jardim – percussion
Production
Trevor Horn
Track list
1. Fly From Here – Overture (1:53)
2. Fly From Here – Pt I – We Can Fly (6:00)
3. Fly From Here – Pt II – Sad Night At The Airfield (6:41)
4. Fly From Here – Pt III – Madman At The Screens (5:16)
5. Fly From Here – Pt IV – Bumpy Ride (2:15)
6. Fly From Here – Pt V – We Can Fly (Reprise) (1:44)
7. The Man You Always Wanted Me To Be (5:07)
8. Life On A Film Set (5:01)
9. Hour Of Need (6:45)
10. Solitaire (3:30)
11. Don’t Take No For An Answer (Previously Unreleased) (4:20)
12. Into The Storm (6:54)
