Yes

Maybe it was hearing Barack Obama saying "Yes we can" in his victory speech on Tuesday evening in Chicago, but this week I've begun listening to the Progressive Rock band "Yes" on my iPod.
My dear friends Dillon and Carol will be delighted, as a few years ago I tried them briefly, and really didn't like what I heard, for whatever reason.
However, I happened to have "Close to the Edge" on my iPod and had never listened, so gave it a go, whilst travelling towards Liverpool Street on the Chingford line this week.
I must say, thrilling stuff! What I particularly admire is the discipline of the music, and its perpetual restlessness...They seem to be good at working through a theme and then really developing it and moving on to other stuff. The lyrics are not the best bit in my opinion: well, when I say that, I experience them as glamorous-poetic: it's a particularly story-telling in song style that doesn't grab me particularly. But, one could say, at least these guys are trying to tell some kind of a story in the song! Give them credit for that.

However, the core of it for me is their music, which certainly feels like, and sounds like, real music...Thought through, following lines...Constantly experimenting with different traditions and feels. Their deployment of jazz-funk at times is thrilling stuff.

The track that particularly grabs me is "Siberian Khatru". The guitar intro to this is most gripping, "electric", rhythmically forceful, nearly strident but not quite, carrying the potential for wild dance with it...A delicate balance between the freedom of dance and a driving, really quite hard, forward momentum which then underpins the rest of the song, as it drives forwards, stating its themes.

I also like their mood changes: symphonic feel to it. Maybe this is what Dillon and Carol mean by "progressive rock"??

If so, I like it!