Track Listing

1. The Calling
2. I Am Waiting
3. Real Love
4. State Of Play
5. Walls
6. Where Will You Be
7. Endless Dream (Silent Spring (Instrumental) / Talk / Endless Dream)
8. The Calling (Special version) (bonus track)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16991 in Music
• Released on: 2002-05-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .26 pounds

Customer Reviews

Criminally ignored
After the Union tour and that awful album, Yes reconvened in the Travor Rabin lineup and made this essential album.
From the opening bars of The Calling you know that this is going to be good and it doesn't disappoint. Rabin is the key songwriter but Jon Anderson has a hand in all the songs and his enjoyment is reflected in the overall 'feel'of the performances.
Highlights are The Calling, I am Waiting and the absolutely stupendous 'Endless Dream' in which Trevor Rabin brings the Yes epic song into the nineties with a vengeance. If you don't value the sheer 'Yes-ness' of this track you're probably not breathing!
The quality of this album really is all down to Trevor Rabin and it completely justifies his stint as a member of the band - without him the band would never have made it through the 80's and 90's and a lot of great music would have been lost. When he left the band and Steve Howe returned things went backwards for a while and have only really come good with the release of Magnification.
This release from Spitfire records includes an additional slightly longer version of The Calling which was originally only included on the Japanese release - it's interesting but not essential - the middle 8 reminds me of Led Zeppelin circa 1972!
The original release of Talk went pretty well unnoticed by the vast majority of Yes fans and was deleted when Victory Records went broke. If you don't have this album and you are a fan then buy it now! You won't be disappointed.

HARD TO PINNACLE
Owning the entire Yes studio collection gives me a good perspective on this super group. I am a huge fan of the early stuff such as Fragile, CTTE, Relayer, Yes Album etc etc but this is my all time favourite Yes recording. Yes have lagged behind Rush in their musical adaptability for many years. However, when this was released at the same time as Rush's Counterparts album, the little mancunian and his fellow musicians for once managed to leap frog Rush with what I beleive is their crispest, tightest and most accomplished recording (although a subsequent succession of superb albums has seen Rush steam roller their way back in front in this particular comparison). After a succession of concept albums, the ourageous global success of 90125 and the sheer blandness of the hotch-potch Union album, you will discover that Talk is simply a foot stomping, thigh slapping, steering wheel tapping, sunroof opening, stonker of an album that even my 15 yr old daughter concedes is 'kinda good'. Not a single weak track. However, i wouldn't suggest that this be your first ever Yes album, otherwise you simply wont get the earlier stuff, which will always remain classic and groundbreaking rock music.

Not as fun as 90125, not as prog as Tales.
In 1994 Yes returned to the 90125/Big Generator lineup to try and recapture the sound and fun spirit of the former album. Again Trevor Rabin is the key songwriter, and also took on production and keyboard duty (Tony Kaye is relegated to a few Hammond Organ moments).

At Rabin's suggestion the album was recorded on about 30 Apple Mac hard drives, making it the first album to dispense with magnetic tape mastering since the 40's. The technology does not help the sound or the music. Production lacks any real punch, and one wishes they'd hired Trevor Horn and a tape recorder again.

First track "The Calling" is pleasant enough, but it generally goes downhill from there. Squire co-wrote "Real Love" but it's not one of his better songs. Indeed almost anybody could be playing bass on this rather flat sounding album. Allan White's drumming has been rendered almost anonymous. Jon Anderson's voice and Rabin's guitar still sound unmistakable however, and on his few moments Kaye's Hammond playing is nice.

Roger Hodgeson penned "Walls" sounds like a poor Supertramp song and is out of place on a Yes album. Almost redeeming the record is "Endless Dream", Rabin and Jon Anderson collaborating to write a positive epic song something like earlier Yes classics. But one song does not an LP make.

As somebody who likes 70's and 80's Yes, albeit when in different moods, I found this dissapointing on release eight years ago and today find it all the more so because Yes has since scaled musical (if not commercial) heights again with a different lineup.