Thirty minutes after its show was supposed to start, Yes still hadn't taken the stage. As the audience waited in the House of Blues on Tuesday, the classical music that had been playing for the past 15 minutes began to crescendo. One might not expect Yes to keep its audience waiting for the most dramatic moment to appear, but, in hindsight, it isn't all that surprising. As the audience quickly learned, the prog rockers' taste for flamboyant showmanship has hardly diminished in the 42 years since the group formed.
Any long−time Yes fan became accustomed to the band's protean lineup decades ago, but the group's latest incarnation is notable for replacing steadfast singer Jon Anderson with the equally whimsical Benoit David and exchanging keyboardist Rick Wakeman for his son Oliver Wakeman.
David first came to the attention of the band for his work with various Yes tribute bands. The resemblance between the vocal styles of Anderson and David is uncanny, but David's voice worked to the group's detriment as much as their benefit. While David's performance and stage presence reproduced those of Anderson on a molecular level, his delivery stuck so close to the source material that he was practically re−enacting studio versions of the sogns. This is not to say David's performance lacked energy, but he did less to freshen the music than his seasoned bandmates.
Despite the intensity the concert would reach, the band's opening numbers were surprisingly dull. When Steve Howe meekly strummed the psycho−funk guitar riff of "Siberian Khatru" (1972) at two−thirds of the original's tempo, some of the prog nerds almost exploded. The rhythm section hadn't gotten its bearings, and the famed Chris Squire−White combo even misaligned some of their hits. Wakeman's solo passages weren't amplified properly, so the harpsichord sounds hardly cut through the mix.
Thankfully, as the group made its way into the less challenging "I've Seen All Good People" (1971) and "Tempus Fugit" (1980) it had much cushier opportunities to warm up.
The next track, "Onward" (1978), is one of the group's most down−tempo songs. Without any technical passages to mask them, the strength of the harmonies between Squire and David became all the more apparent. Wakeman's solo was suitably pastoral, hardly evoking the technical wizardry he would summon later in the set.
The group didn't truly come into its own until it played "Astral Traveller" (1970) the first song of the night to showcase the interplay that made Yes so famous. As the crunch of Howe's guitar intro segued into the percussive first theme, audience members were treated to the Yes they had known and loved since the '70s.
Squire and drummer Alan White re−attained the synchronicity that made them such an effective rhythm section. Even White, whose conventional technique never suited the group as well as that of original drummer Bill Bruford, began to break out of his shell, conjuring a surprisingly aggressive drum solo halfway through the tune. The devilishly rhythmic interplay between Squire's bass and Wakeman's organ was one of the highlights of the night, as the two traded phrases with the same intensity that made old Yes shows so compelling.
The energy of "Astral Traveller" was maintained for the remainder of the show, with Squire and Howe working the crowd with an almost adolescent charm. The pinnacle of the evening came with the infamous guitar−versus−keyboard battle that spiced up so many previous Yes shows. Young Wakeman proved to be a capable match for Howe as the two traded riffs on "South Side of the Sky" (1971). Every member of the band — even the reserved Wakeman — managed to crack a broad smile relatively often. It became obvious that, even after all these years, the members of Yes still immensely enjoy playing with each other.
