As Yes achieve their quickest turnaround between studio album projects for more than half a century, Prog holds up a mirror to the soul of the seemingly unstoppable progressive giants as they consider their immediate – and long-term – future with Mirror To The Sky.

Words: Paul Ging Images: Gottlieb Bros

Yes: a band with many, many entry points.

When a band have lasted as long as Yes, there are many entry points for fans. While some saw them at The Marquee and Blaises in 1968, picking up the debut album shortly afterwards, the rest of us have later jumping-on points: maybe Steve Howe’s debut with their crucial relaunch platter, The Yes Album; or Tales From Topographic Oceans, when Yes became a permanent byword for the prog genre. Perhaps one of the comeback albums: 1977’s Going For The One, a UK charttopper at the height of the media’s obsession with punk, or maybe 1983’s stunningly successful 90125.

But 1980’s Drama surely brought in more than average. The surprising recruitment policy of Buggles synth duo Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes put the band’s name on the radar of much younger rock fans and established that it was possible for Yes to thrive creatively without their charismatic, talismanic original frontman, Jon Anderson. And rather than slavishly copying earlier albums, Drama sired the hard-edged likes of Machine Messiah and Does It Really Happen? – founding texts for the prog metal genre. Drama therefore established an important principle in terms of personnel and artistic reinvention that resonates ever louder in 2023. As stalwart guitarist and now producer Steve Howe says: “Drama is quite relevant to what we’re doing now, because there’s a tightness about it. There’s an approach to the dynamics of it, which we can’t help but follow.”

“We’re now in a streamlined, happy environment where music is what we work at most of the year, which is a lovely thing.”

Steve Howe

This is abundantly clear on the group’s 23rd studio offering, Mirror To The Sky, which is surely destined to bring in its fair share of new fans. The warm reception to lead single Cut From The Stars and anticipatory buzz around the album finds various Yes members in an upbeat and confident mood, convinced of its importance to the band’s future. Says Howe: “It’s not the same line-up [as 2021’s The Quest] because unfortunately we’ve lost Alan [White, drummer], but it’s the mould of a band that wants to carry on. So that’s why I think it’s important.”

Despite all the spectacular music made and thematic obsession with unity and general good vibes in their earlier eras, the history of Yes from inception to 2004 was famously fraught and dysfunctional.