Going for the One

The pedal steel guitar at the opening is a deliberate provocation — an instrument associated with country music and American heartbreak appearing at the start of a Yes album, signaling that the band had loosened something after the dense conceptualism of the "Tales" era. Howe plays it with extraordinary fluency, the notes bending and sustaining in that aching, horizontal way pedal steel has, before the band coalesces around a groove that is tighter and more immediate than their earlier work. Wakeman's return brought a more classical grandeur back to the keyboards — church organ swells, declarative piano figures — and Anderson sounds invigorated, his vocals direct and joyful rather than mystical and searching. The lyrical thrust is about commitment and aspiration, about choosing to reach for something difficult rather than settling, and the music matches that feeling of determined forward momentum. This was Yes stepping back from their most architecturally complex ambitions and rediscovering the pleasure of a song that moves and breathes. It belongs to a summer afternoon with enough light left in the day to feel optimistic, the kind of moment when ambition feels like pleasure rather than burden — the specific feeling of setting out toward something you actually believe you might reach.