Frontiers 2025
Revitalizing timeless tapestries to make then shine ever so brightly, esteemed vocalist and his sympathetic coterie open a new vista of progressive revelations.
& THE BAND GEEKS –
Live: Perpetual Change
Out in 2024, "True" restored Jon Anderson‘s credentials as a creative force and established his current accompanists as an inventive team which do justice to the veteran, whose music inspired them to become musicians, and also provide him with original ideas, so the listener expected their debut concert release to include some of this album’s material. Yet “Live: Perpetual Change” captures them interpreting a bunch of numbers the singer recorded five decades ago, and it might have been frustrating, if it wasn’t a statement. It’s aimed at showing that the legendary artist is still able to augment the cornerstones of his past – hence the title of the audiovisual package, preserving for posterity the collective’s 2023 outing – and that the players, challenged with overcoming their initial designation as a tribute act, succeeded in achieving their goal, thanks to the presence of a genuine asset at the fore. Merely repeating what’s been done previously could diminish the value of the art-rock gems, but then, changing the arrangements completely would undermine the whole intent.
That’s why the ensemble utilize the perennials’ sound palette and, working around the classic templates, apply their own fantasies to it. There’s a great deal of energy, or even positive aggression, to “Yours Is No Disgrace” which begins the proceedings to immediately set up a stall of differences between YES and THE BAND GEEKS – melodic differences, too. The younger performers’ passages often feel unfamiliar and, thus, fresh, Andy Graziano’s guitar lines going off on a tangent Steve Howe would marvel at and the project mastermind Richie Castellano’s bass laying the groove just as mighty as Chris Squire‘s, albeit possessed with a pronounced rock edge. This pair of bearded, shaven-headed instrumentalists – armed, respectively, with true-to-form Gibsons and Rickenbackers – serve as a fine contrast to Jon whom they flank, the warbler looking invigorated in his manner and sporting a “Topographic Oceans” T-shirt under a windbreaker – perhaps, for the first letting his sartorial flair embrace such mundane merchandise.
But if the expansive “Perpetual Change” takes a soulful turn, and the blistering “Heart Of The Sunrise” struts with a swagger ‘n’ swing courtesy of the rhythm section, “Close To The Edge” – one of several epics delivered here in their glorious entirety – seems fairy-tale ferocious. Its occasionally almost a cappella vocal polyphony is so unlike the weave of voices longtime fans got used to, with a slight down-to-earth roughness rendering it more human than angelic, and that’s clearly a deliberate step, rather than a result of a necessity to accommodate any wear-and-tear in Anderson’s pipes, because there’s none. All the high notes are up where they belong, in the stratosphere, so there’s nothing to get in the way of his singing and strumming an acoustic axe to ground “Starship Trooper” in folk and allow it bump and grind, or of his plucking a harp on “Awaken” to elevate its intense filigree to celestial heights.
Whereas YES often came across as a group of soloists, THE BAND GEEKS present a united sonic front, and though echoes of Rick Wakeman and Patrick Moraz are easy to discern, keyboards are reduced to a supporting role here, despite the labors of two ivories drivers, Christopher Clark and Robert Kipp, and drummer Andy Ascolese moving, for a brief spell, over to synthesizers as well. With Jon’s assistant Rob Schmoll enhancing “And You And I” via a twelve-string layer and his namesake Kipp strapping a guitar too, the rejuvenated Anderson stages a visual spectacle to fully inhabit the piece’s lyrics, and see “Your Move / I’ve Seen All Good People” overflow with merriment. “Gates Of Delirium” – which reflects his animated maturity now, to a great effect, instead of erstwhile philosophical joie de vivre – hasn’t been as vibrantly multidimensional for fifty years now, and when “Soon” – that existed independently all too often – is reinstated in its context, strands of spiritual bliss descend on the audience, leaving the space only for the tribal “Roundabout” to round the set off triumphantly.
So yes, change can be perpetual yet some great things must stay the same, and Jon Anderson’s art is one of those mutably permanent phenomena.
*****
