The two hundred and eighteenth album: #218 Yes - Fragile

There's a lot in Fragile that feels like it produces a real example of the prog rock genre. Heavy rock riff lightened with the electric organ, long, conceptual songs with a story it tells as it goes on mixed with short concepts - a rearranged version of Brahms is on the second track, for example. It shows intelligence and thought put into an album that you don't necessarily see in other genres.

Even the short songs here are part of the setup for the longer epics, and with the changes in the longer songs it seems more for the form sometimes than something that was fully intended, but I guess it makes sense for release aims - Long-Distance Runaround would have worked well as its own single, a distillation of the album in a track, while also matching with the tracks around it.

All of this gives you an album where you get lost in the tracks, and the phases in them are as important as the changes in the track listing that you see. It's a good listen - energetic in places, but also contemplative, not going all out but experimenting a lot to create a distinct sound that does well in telling a story.