Review: Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks – True (2024)

True is Jon Anderson’s first album with The Band Geeks.

Yes founding member singer/songwriter Jon Anderson made his first solo album in 1976 with Olias Of Sunhillow. Since then, he continued his solo career alongside Yes until 2008 when he was forced to leave the band due to health concerns. Since then, Anderson, now 79, made a full recovery, but a return to Yes, now managed by guitarist Steve Howe, has not been possible. And it won’t be as long as it’s up to Howe.

In his solo career, Anderson has constantly and enthusiastically experimented with different styles with varying degrees of success. Before leaving Yes, Anderson seemed to consciously avoid Yes-style progressive rock, even though there were often progressive elements in his music. This has changed somewhat over the last ten years. Invention Of Knowledge (2016), made with The Flower Kings’ leader Roine Stolt, and Anderson’s own 1000 Hands – Chapter One (2019) leaned more clearly towards symphonic prog. Still, True seems more clearly an attempt to make the kind of music you’d expect from Yes than either of those albums.

Why and how right now?

The answer to why is probably largely that when Anderson can no longer satisfy his need to make Yes music under a proper brand he has decided to do it under his own name. I believe that Anderson has a genuine desire to honour the Yes legacy (and in a way to capture that legacy for himself from Howe), but on the other hand, there is certainly a commercial imperative. In 2024 it will be much easier to sell Anderson’s solo albums that sound like Yes than some random genre that Anderson happened to be interested in trying out. Also, booking tours where Anderson performs Yes music backed by a band that can play that challenging repertoire credibly is probably a lucrative concept. Perhaps Anderson has even finally taken a cue from how Steve Hackett got his career off the ground in the 2010s by taking Genesis as the main star of his early music concerts.

Once the why is known, it is natural to move on to answering the how question. I already referred above to a backing band with the capacity to play Yes music at a credible level. A simple old-school way would be to put a manager on the phone and arrange for a bunch of famous and talented musicians to hit the road. However, this would be expensive and, on the other hand, even if the musicians in question had more than adequate playing skills, the end result would not necessarily be natural if they had no real interest in Yes music at all. It would be more practical if an enthusiastic but relatively unknown group of musicians could be found somewhere who were passionate Yes fans. This is where Anderson got lucky.

A few years ago, Anderson stumbled across an American YouTube show called Band Geek, in which the collective performed rock classics that also included several Yes songs. Anderson was impressed by how this group of relatively unknown musicians managed to perform Yes music with authenticity. Anderson contacted multi-instrumentalist Richie Castellano, who was the father of the Band Geek concept. This in turn led to Anderson and the YouTube-inspired band The Band Geeks touring the US in 2023 playing classic Yes songs.

Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks

After a successful tour, Castellano was commissioned by Anderson to develop one of his compositions. Castellano went all out and ended up building an exceptionally detailed midi demo of the song called ”Counties And Countries”. Anderson’s acoustic version took a more progressive turn with Castellano’s help and grew into a nearly ten-minute prog epic that sounds more or less like 70s Yes. There are gentle acoustic guitars, passionate electric guitar playing, an ornately and nimbly played keyboard solo that is all Rick Wakeman and even the strong harmonic vocals that have always been a trademark of the best Yes albums. ”Counties And Countries” was the song that got Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks a record deal. The message from Frontiers after hearing the song was unequivocal: more of this, please.

Following the success of the ”Counties And Countries” experiment, Anderson sent Castellano dozens of songs to arrange, some of which were decades old. Some of the songs had already been developed with other composers for various projects that had failed to materialise for one reason or another. Among the composers are a few familiar names from Yes’ history. Jonathan Elias, who produced Union, and Jimmy Haun, who simulated Steve Howe’s guitar playing on the same album, both receive two composition credits on the final album.

Anderson’s demos eventually resulted in nine songs that refer to different eras of Yes’ career. Apart from ”Counties And Countries”, the most successful offering on the album is the second epic ”Once Upon A Dream” which stretches to over 16 minutes. ”Once Upon A Dream” makes particularly effective use of members of The Band Geeks as backing vocalists alongside Anderson and its rhythmic repetitive tiki-tai, tiki- tai, tiki-tay vocal theme is truly delightful and very Andersonian. At times majestic and at times intensely imposing, the epic unfolds quite naturally and even reminds one of ’Awaken’ at times. ”Once Upon A Dream” is definitely one of the best tracks of over ten minutes that have emerged from the Yes camp since the 70s.

”Counties And Countries” and ”Once Upon A Dream” successfully refer to the epic scale music of Yes in the 70s, but on the other hand some songs like ”True Messenger” and ”Shine On” take the mood in the direction of Yes in the 80s and 90s. The intense and downright turbo-charged opening track ”True Messenger” is reminiscent of the 1999 album The Ladder, with the difference that the guitar soloing sounds very much like Trevor Rabin. ”Shine On” is an energetic rock track that could have been right at home on Open Your Eyes. And while ”Shine On” is clearly better than the average song from that pretty dismal album, it has its own problems. The song rushes forward a little too one-dimensionally and on the other hand the band is outclassed by Anderson’s screaming vocals. The fast runs of the bass guitar sound a little too obviously like the ghost of Chris Squire.

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The cross-pollination of Anderson and The Band Geeks has led to a fruitful outcome for True. It has long been natural and typical for Anderson to make music that is quite light and airy. The Band Geeks, on the other hand, are a rock band whose members’ tastes lean partly towards relatively heavy rock (Castellano has played guitar and keyboards in Blue Öyster Cult since 2004). Castellano has said that The Band Geeks tried to take the music in a more and more rocky direction, which Anderson opposed, and on the other hand brought in more surprising arrangement ideas that Castellano and his partners would never have thought of. The result of this cross-pollination is an interesting outcome that sounds more like Yes music than Anderson would have naturally achieved on his own. And on the other hand, if The Band Geeks had tried to make Yes-like music without Anderson, the result would probably have been just very unconvincing.

Anderson’s stratospherically powerful vocals have of course played a central role on Yes’ best albums and the question that will surely be on most people’s minds is whether the almost 80-year-old veteran can still carry that role. The short answer is absolute: yes! Online, True has received an excellent reception and some comments have even stated that Anderson is singing as well as he did in his prime. I wouldn’t go that far myself, because Anderson’s voice does have decades in it. His voice is thinner and more fragile than it used to be, but still remarkably well preserved. Anderson still sings powerfully and almost as high as he did as a young man. And I, for one, hear no clear indication that the sound has been overly corrected in the studio with autotune or similar technical tricks. Funnily enough, Anderson’s age comes through clearly in his voice, not in the more energetic songs on the album, but in the more delicate tracks like ”Build Me An Ocean”.

At no point does True really imitate (though there are many lyrical déjà-vu’s) the songs of Yes, but on the other hand it doesn’t really offer any fresh new direction or unprecedented experiments. The only completely new element in the Yes context seems to be the gospel choir of ”Make It Right”. For which, too, it is possible to find a precedent on the dreadful Symphonic Music Of Yes album. But is it reasonable to expect innovation from the almost 80-year-old Anderson? Not really. The main thing is that the compositions themselves are mostly strong and Castellano’s arrangements work. There’s not really a single real miss on the 58-minute album, although perhaps a few minor tracks could have been thrown overboard. Especially the album-closing ”Thank God” seems pointless as it’s another ballad that seems to be dedicated to Anderson’s wife. We’ve heard a few too many of these on Anderson’s albums and ”Thank God”, already written around the time of The Ladder, is not a particularly necessary addition to this set.

Read also: Review: Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe – s/t (1989)

The Band Geeks perform well on the album. The whole group – Castellano (bass, guitar), Rob Kipp (guitar, keyboards), Chris Clark (keyboards), Andy Graziano (guitar, bass) and Andy Ascolese (drums) – play with a skill and energy that the real Yes can no longer match. On the other hand, there are several moments of pastiche as these younger legends try to channel the style of the Yes men. The Band Geeks’ own persona tends to be overshadowed by the Yes legends.

I think the album deserves a slight minus for its production. True is not a particularly heavily produced sounding album, but is more content to say what it has to say in a rather live-like simple way. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but the overall sound is a bit too bright, sharp and even compressed. The sound could have done with more analogue warmth.

True, packaged in an incredibly cheap-looking cover, has been received by Yes fans mostly very positively. Many have even praised it as the best album to come out of the Yes camp since the 70s. I wouldn’t really go that far myself. Yes albums such as Drama, 90125 and Magnification are, in my opinion, much more compelling. Of Anderson’s post-70s solo albums, I would put Deseo, Change We Must and 1000 Hands ahead of True.

I don’t think True is an album that will be celebrated in 20 years as a classic that should definitely have been released under the Yes banner. It is, however, for the most part very high quality melodic prog rock that does credit not only to the Yes name but can easily be counted among the bright spots of Anderson’s extensive and unusual solo career. And if you want to compare it with the albums of Steve Howe’s Yes, True does very well in that comparison as well. I’m not saying True wipes the floor with Howe’s Yes, but I think Anderson wins this round. And largely thanks to the energetic and enthusiastic musicianship of The Band Geeks. The ball is now in Howe’s court; do better Steve!

As successful as the collaboration between Anderson and The Band Geeks on True has been, it seems at the moment that it will not continue after the 2025 tour. Anderson has stated that there are no plans for further recordings and that he will continue to work on his numerous other projects. According to fairly credible reports, there could be three major new releases from Anderson in a relatively short period of time. The next album with Roine Stolt is apparently only just being finalised, while 1000 Hands: Chapter Two and the long-promised follow-up to Olias Of Sunhillow, Zamran Volume One, are also nearing the finish line. If these three albums actually hit the shelves in the next couple of years, we can start to talk about a rare renaissance of the last phase of a career for Anderson, who is long past the normal retirement years (Anderson has said he has no intention of retiring). What a joy to see and hear Anderson still energetic and creative after a career spanning almost 60 years.

Best tracks: “True Messenger”, “Counties And Countries”, “Still A Friend”,  “Once Upon A Dream”

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Tracks

  1. True Messenger (5:49)
  2. Shine On (4:17)
  3. Counties And Countries (9:50)
  4. Build Me An Ocean (3:19)
  5. Still A Friend (5:01)
  6. Make It Right (6:06)
  7. Realization Part Two (3:32)
  8. Once Upon A Dream (16:31)
  9. Thank God (3:48)

Musicians

Jon Anderson: vocals Richie Castellano: bass guitar, guitar Rob Kipp: guitar, keyboards Chris Clark: keyboards Andy Graziano: guitar, bass guitar Andy Ascolese: drums

Producer: Jon Anderson, Richie Castellano
Label: Frontier

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