Music review: Yes, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Yes returned to their roots for this Glasgow show, writes Fiona Shepherd

Yes, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ***

The idiosyncratic artistic world of Yes was on display for all to enjoy even before entering the auditorium. Their Classic Tales tour comes with its own sale of Roger Dean’s artwork for the band’s record sleeves, mystical surrealist landscapes which became such quintessential prog rock imagery that he has created new paintings and prints inspired by particular songs.

A Yes tour also comes with a travelling fanbase, intimately versed in their colossal catalogue and primed for the latest excavation of material. For guitarist Steve Howe, this show took the band back to their roots with a second-half suite hewn from the behemoth that was Tales From Topographic Oceans, an album which came to represent the worst excesses of progressive rock on release in 1973 but has been somewhat rehabilitated since. Here, its Hindu text-inspired four sides were condensed into around 20 minutes of demanding vocal passages, intuitive classical guitar interludes, prog scatting and a brief bass solo, some of which had not been played live for 50 years.

Yes PIC: Mike Ainscoe

Earlier, they opened with the sludge metal riff of Machine Messiah, which resolved into a fleet symphonic sound, with reedy tenor duet between vocalist Jon Davison and bassist Billy Sherwood and propulsive drumming from “new” recruit Jay Schellen. Like many of the shape-shifting epics of Yes, if you weren’t keen on a particular direction there would be a contrasting break on its way.

The first half alone encompassed the slick whimsy of It Will Be a Good Day (The River), the soaring four-part folk harmony of I’ve Seen All Good People and a blues boogie instrumental version of Simon & Garfunkel’s America, as well as a shout-out from Howe to Glaswegian musician David Foster for his lyrical contribution to a warmly received Time and a Word, while the second half was bookended by cosmic rock odyssey South Side of the Sky and the warming waft of Starship Trooper.