"This has the typical Yes sound of the 70s, but of course the band members have all been swapped out for obvious reasons. Looking only at the music itself, it's quite good and on a high level as far as musicianship and production are concerned. The songwriting seems bland and arbitrary though."
"With Benoît David taking up the vocals instead of Jon Anderson, "Fly From Here" is bound to get its share of detractors, but if one can deactivate the irrational parts of the fan brain, I think that one will find that this sounds like, well, it sounds like Yes.
We are dealing with progressive rock here, and it has all the things that the classic, and less classic albums from the 70s had - that is spacey keyboards, genre transgressions, complex song structures and other twists and turns, and, of course, long songs - on this album, they have limited the number of epics to the five part 20+ minutes title song. Musically, everything is the way it should be, I think.
And vocalswise? Well, I like what Benoît David is doing. His voice is similar to that of Jon Anderson, but it has a finer, or perhaps more delicate, quality, and he certainly has his own vocal-identity and contributes to the sound in his own way.
I like this album, and I hope that it will be received positively and that fans will be open-minded, challenging the view that progheads are intolerant and narrowminded snobs, and accept a fine album with a fine vocalist in stead of decrying Jon Anderson's absence."
"I really like this one. I think it bears comparison with classics such as "Relayer", "Fragile", "Time and a Word", "Tales from Topographis Oceans", and "Close to the Edge" without being too similar to them, yet containing elements that long time fans will recognize. The production is top notch and musically, while shorter and simpler than the classics from the 70s, all of the tracks on this release are interesting listens - even the so-called pop-song "Don't Go" which is more reminiscent of "90125" (so there's a link there, too - another link's the guitar pattern in "Soft as a Dove" which vaguely resembles the main riff of "Hearts"). In fact, this album might be an appropriate gateway into the world of prog to "prog noobs"."
"Best Yes album since Relayer?
Sure, "Don't Go" is an out of place pop song where its deep texture can't save it. Other than that, I've never heard the band so inspired since the Machine Messiah composition in Drama. The composition is the best point of the album: the way all instruments and orchestra harmonize is sublime. The only other rock+orchestra effort that is as successful as this one is Rick Wakeman's "Journey". Those two epics might be the best songs they wrote since Machine Messiah (you can tell I love that song)."
"This may be poppy compared to the Yes of the pre-80s, but it's quality pop-rock. And this album contains many songs which, although short and catchy, are still somewhat complex (at least for the pop-rock of the time), the album still containing many progressive elements (while nowhere near the Yes of the pre-80s). I like it a lot, and I don't care if people bash it."
