the Ladder reviews

[Mr. Holland]

Lets act "Journalists". Put your review of this album in here......

[Amy]

I just heard this album for the first time recently.
I immediately loved Homeworld, It Will Be A Good Day and the intro to New Language.

I'm going through some major changes in my life right now....and for some reason, I started playing The Ladder quite often.

All the little things that seemed to annoy me have disappeared. This is a great album. It has an amazing energy. If I'm feeling a bit unsure, all I have to do is pop in The Ladder and I feel great. I don't think there's one song on it that I don't like. Even the "pop music sounding" parts of New Language seem to fit in better now.

The album really has a great flow to it.

I still think Elton should be singing "If Only You Knew"....LOL..(makes me smile every time I hear it), but I like that one too.

ok, not exactly being a journalist, but I wanted to get my 2 cents in.....

[Timmo]

Agreed.

This is a wonderful album.

Goes down easy, but has enough complexity to demand multiple listens.

I'm also a big fan of "Lightning Strikes".

[cinderella]

If Only You Knew is my favorite.
I adore it. :headset:

[Amy]

I'm also a big fan of "Lightning Strikes".
Due to another thread, I started looking for my least favorite song on this album. Right now it's a tie between Face to Face and Lightning Strikes. Face to Face might just have to take the lead here, but it's not too often that I get through LS without hitting the ff button.

[cinderella]

I don't care for Lightning Strikes either.

[creamy]

This is the most underappreciated Yes album in my opinion. In totality i believe it is their best album since the ABWH effort.I think as time goes on it will grow on alot more people.

[new_sum_do_solve_ay]

It is great. It got me to be a Yes fan after a long hiatus. I picked it up purely because of the Homeworld PC strategy game. Face to Face is fantastic. Can I? has got that special something that keeps me interested in the band. Always trying something new and experimental.

[Hed G.]

This is the first yes album to stand up to the standard set by their '70's work.
Fairbairn's production really allows the band to shine through, and the new
members bring a freshness of approach sorely lacking in, say, magnification.

[Jm Sin]

I've heard some historie about the direction of the band, and we know it by the Ladder, taking 'New Language', for instance, the 'interactive vision streaming', and this cibernetic stuff, a misunderstanding with the ideas of the music of the seventies, an intro of a digital living..a paradox, but they playing, and playing..
The Ladder , they are going and knowing where!!

[KPatrick]

There are two reviews of this album that need to be written.

One is "compared to other Yes stuff." I loved this album at first, but after 5 months or so it faded back into the pack for me. The same is not true, for example, of MAGNIFICATION. I don't have any theories of why that is so, except that the music is great to listen to, but ultimately, in the Yes canon, there's something missing. I submit that that something is Steve Howe, but I say that without knowing how much compositional influence he had over MAG. I loved MAGNIFICATION the first time I heard it and 4 years later, it still holds my imagination. I think the difference, honestly, is the absence of Billy Sherwood. His work with Chris on Conspiracy is great, but it doesn't have the classic elements of Yes.

The second review is the review of THE LADDER in its context, 1999, an absoute ice age for popular music. I think THE LADDER was the perfect album for its time. I think if radio had given "Lightning Strikes" a chance, it would have exploded. It would have been different, but still ridiculously catchy in its different way. It would have sounded great on Letterman, with the band playing along in the horn parts. If Ricky Martin was hot, why couldn't this song have been?

And "If Only You Knew"... this song, if given a chance on radio, would have been monster. Remember, this was the time of Celine Dion. This song captured everything that Celine Dion was trying to do. It was emotional, it was GRAND, it was catchy... just beautiful. It is a f--king crime that a singel edit of this song was not pushed by a plugger insane enough to live with beasts, someone who would have gnawed people's limbs off to get this played.

And the same is true of "Lightning Strikes." You know the Station That Everybody At Work Can Agree On? People listening to that have no allegiance to the latest hot band. They didn't want to hear Ricky Martin; they wanted to hear "Livin' La Vida Loca." And justifiably so. Because while Ricky Martin is a turd, that song was awesome. That's what most people have an allegiance to songs. And if they'd been given half a chance at both of these songs, they would have gobbled them up, just like they did "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" in 1984.

Like I said, these are two different reviews. And many people will be happy that radio success didn't find Yes in 1999, because... well, you guys explain it. If radio success would have prevented them from making MAGNIFICATION, then OK. Maybe it was worth it. But it's a damn shame that I had to watch them in a theatre with 900 people in Rochester the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 1999, on that album. It's not Yes' fault that album didn't go huge.

And the non-single stuff on the album stacks up nicely with other Yes stuff. "Homeworld" is everything you want out of a Yes song. "New Language" is close. I love "To Be Alive." But everything else is ultimately comes up wanting...

I don't know. Spur of the moment review. But it should have done better than it did, in a year that anyone knew who Britney Spears was.