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Mirror To The Sky (2LP/2CD/Blu-Ray Deluxe Set)
“This is a very important album for the band,” says Steve Howe, Yes’ longest serving member, master guitarist, and producer of Mirror To The Sky. “We kept the continuity in the approach we established on The Quest, but we haven’t repeated ourselves. That was the main thing. As Yes did in the seventies from one album to another, we’re growing and moving forward. In later years, Yes often got going but then didn’t do the next thing. This album is demonstrative of us growing, and building again.” For Yes, that “next thing” is a collection of high energy, intricate, lush and layered new studio songs for an album which adds to the band’s much heralded legacy, while charting a path to exciting future times ahead.
For more than five decades, the only constant in Yes’ storied career has been perpetual change. Never ones to rest on their laurels, Yes have always
driven forward relentlessly, never looking back, while simultaneously carrying with them those core values upon which the band was founded, and has never abandoned. Yes is a band built around exquisite vocals and vocal harmonies, unsurpassed musical prowess, unexpected, ambitious song structures, often mesmerizingly complex, yet breathtaking arrangements, and a willingness to bend and blend genres regardless of “the rules,” but always, all is in service of the music. “Yes don’t follow rules. We make our own,” they like to say. This has always been their guiding principle.
The Quest, Yes’ 2021 debut for Inside Out Music proved to be something of a revelation for the band. Never had they entrusted a single member to sit alone in the producer’s chair while still active as a full member of the group. They soon discovered that not only could Steve Howe produce the band, but things were going downright harmoniously — a sentiment not always felt in Yes albums of recent years.
The result of this harmony, coupled with lots of pent-up creative energy that had been building and building when touring became impossible, resulted in a veritable explosion of creative output, yielding more music than could fit into a single release.
True to form, Yes’ music was continuing to rapidly evolve as well, growing from The Quest’s more contemplative, gentler side, towards a higher energy, more aggressive stance that showcases Yes’ rockier side, but without leaving behind the lush melodies and arrangements for which they’re renown.
As they were wrapping up The Quest, Yes found themselves with song sketches, structures, and ideas that were demanding attention. Yes received unconditional support from InsideOut boss Thomas Waber, who encouraged them to keep going in the studio, months before The Quest would even go on sale. It was like throwing gasoline on their creative fire.
“When we delivered everything, and they were just getting the vinyl and everything into production for manufacturing, we were still very much in that creative zone,” explains Steve Howe. “That belief that Thomas had in us really meant a lot,” he says.
“We felt a little melancholy that The Quest was winding down, so we said, ‘Well, why don’t we just keep going?’” continues singer Jon Davison. “I had been living in England, and it was just going so well with Steve and I meeting with (engineer) Curtis Schwartz, and working at the Yes HQ studio.”
“There was a lot of material floating around because the band hadn’t done anything in the studio for so long. Ideas were just copious,” says bassist Billy Sherwood. “The pace of it was fast. As soon as we were finished with The Quest, and the mix had come out, we took a couple of little breaks there to catch our breath. But there was still music flowing around in the loop. It was just constantly being looked at and worked on. As we were all home and in that mode, things started progressing quite swiftly. We just went one album into another without really announcing, ‘Hey, we’re working on a second record right now.’ We just continued to work on material. It came about pretty naturally, and then we refined it as the process went on. But the initial bursts — there was a lot of material around!”
“I think Steve did a great job producing The Quest,” says Thomas Waber. “It sounds great. Audio- wise, sonically, that ended up being a great album.” That Howe-as-producer, Schwartz-as-engineer partnership continues on Mirror to the Sky, which will once again also be available in pristine 5.1 Blu-Ray, in addition to vinyl, CD, and downloadable formats. Mirror To The Sky will also be available in Dolby Atmos for unrivaled audio fidelity, a first for any Yes album.
Much to everyone’s delight, including that of longtime-fan Thomas Waber, Yes have pushed into territory they practically invented — the prog rock epic — albeit in a thoroughly new and modern way. “I always felt that it would be great to have stuff that’s a little bit more epic,” he says, although he resisted the temptation to push for something that would be too formatted and could come off as contrived. He just gave the band space to do what they do and let things develop. “They were so excited by The Quest and the momentum they had that they went straight back in to the studio. What they were writing, even early on, was obviously headed in that epic direction — what Yes music really is to me. It is almost a genre onto itself. It is ‘Yes Music.’ Mirror To The Sky certainly is Yes Music.
Mirror To The Sky features not one, but four tracks clocking in at over eight minutes, with the sweeping and cinematic title track coming in just shy of fourteen minutes. What’s more, the tracks, like Yes’ best, take the listener on a wide dynamically ranging journey of soundscapes which also showcase Steve Howe’s dazzling guitars, Jon Davison’s angelic, crystalline vocals, Billy Sherwood’s deftly dancing bass, keyboard wizard Geoff Downes’ impeccable sounds, exquisite melodies and fills, and Jay Schellen’s masterfully controlled explosions, on drums.
Jay Schellen, who has been touring with the band since 2016, was hand-picked to step into his mentor and friend Alan White’s role when White sadly passed away in 2022. “I had done the 2016 Topographic Drama tour on my own for Alan,” say Jay. “From late 2017 onwards, we had a partnership, and a beautiful partnership, I might add. I learned so much, and discovered so much about Alan’s style, and why it was the way it was. It fit his personality so perfectly. This album has Alan’s presence all over it. It is inside of us. So this is still, in my heart, Alan just being present and with us, and with me, in a big way.”
“Jay’s a light force of creativity and personality,” says Jon Davison. “You feel good just by being around him. He incorporates so much of his soulfulness into his skillful playing. He has a strong rock background and brings that punchy tightness to the music in his own unique way, yet remains very much true to Alan’s style.”
“We’ve shown that this method works,” says Geoff Downes, of Yes’ locking in on this new recording process with Steve Howe in the guitarist/producer role, which has resulted in the band reaching new levels of productivity and creativity, making some of their finest music. “The band’s really, really on fire. Everyone is pulling in the same direction. It may have something to do with the fact that we were all off the grid for so long. But at the same time, we did manage to pull it together very quickly. All that work that we’d done prior to the pandemic really enabled us to dust ourselves off quickly and get back into it. We wanted to show everybody that we are still a force to be reckoned with.”
Billy Sherwood agrees. “It feels like a natural evolution of everyone being comfortable in their chair and bringing their best to the table,” he says. “Everyone did that on Mirror To The Sky in a major way. It’s nice to think about the future and where things are going to go. The possibilities are endless at this point.”
“I feel a great harmony with us all,” says Jay Schellen. “Being relaxed about things, maybe that’s the ingredient that just fuels the creativity. We’re definitely a team, and we feel a lot of harmony, and a lot of fondness for each other. Being around each other is great. That’s awesome.”
Steve Howe is ever-optimistic about what comes next. “What we’ve just done is what we’re going to do again. Touring is back on. There’s almost clearer definitions between these things now than there ever was before, and we’re hoping for a nice mix of things — some great touring, and this album coming out. We seem to be enjoying it more. We’re happier. There’s a collective awareness. If I didn’t understand how good these guys were, it wouldn’t be worth doing. But since they are that good, then I can come up to their game and help in every way I can. I have had more responsibility on Mirror To The Sky. But what the guys have been coming through with is stronger as well, and hopefully, my contributions are stronger, too.”
“We truly get along as people,” says Jon Davison. “I feel like everyone’s focused inward to the greater circle, concentric to the core of highest standards that define Yes. It’s a wonderful thing to witness and of which to play a part. I believe this reflects vibrantly in the music and the creative input that each one is willing to apply, not for the benefit of the individual, but for the greater whole that is Yes. When you think about the evolutionary creation process of the band, it’s interesting to see how The Yes Album had to happen before the band could evolve to a state of creating Fragile. Then Fragile, in all its uniqueness, became the new standard, which then became the evolutionary catalyst for Close to the Edge. Each album propelled them to the next, yet each remained distinctly unique to its predecessor. How exciting that all these years later, the band can still have a bit of that momentum, as evident in the evolutionary creative process from The Quest to Mirror To The Sky.”
Exciting indeed.
Doug Gottlieb & Glenn Gottlieb (The Gottlieb Bros.) New York City
February 2023
TRACKLISTING:
CD1:
Cut From The Stars
All Connected
Luminosity
Living Out Their Dream
Mirror to the Sky
Circles Of Time
CD2:
Unknown Place
One Second Is Enough
Magic Potion
LINE-UP:
Steve Howe – guitar, vocals
Geoff Downes – keyboards, vocals
Jon Davison – vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion Billy Sherwood – bass, vocals
Jay Schellen – drums