Next Yes album "sooner rather than later"

In a new Billboard interview, Squire talks about making the next Yes studio album "sooner rather than later" and there are unconfirmed rumours on Yesfans.com of a specific timeline leading up to a spring/summer 2013 release. Yet there has been a certain scepticism among Yes fans about how quickly Yes might produce a follow-up to Fly from Here. I suggest this comes from two sources.

First, critics of the David-fronted band basically question this Yes's viability as recording artists. They struggle to believe that this band is capable of making an album and/or that anyone would want to release such a thing. However, such critics confuse what they want with what is likely to happen. However many fans were undoubtedly lost when Anderson was left behind, Fly from Here sold well and Frontiers want more.

I have more sympathy for the second reason for scepticism, those who look at recent history. It took ten years to produce Fly from Here, some way, so it will probably take ten years before we get the next album. However, I would argue that we have to consider why there was a ten year delay.

Much of that delay, in the post-Magnification period, was due to the tensions between Anderson/Wakeman and Howe/Squire/White. Those tensions are now outside the band. Throughout that post-Magnification period, Howe/Squire/White appeared keen to continue the traditional record/tour/record/tour cycle, so it should be no surprise to see them return to that model.

Critics of the current line-up sometimes characterise them as ruthlessly and recklessly rushing into a Yes without Anderson, but actually I think a chunk of the delay in producing Fly from Here was because of Howe/Squire/White's tentativeness in moving ahead without Anderson. They spent years before taking the plunge and deliberately didn't rush into making an album. It seems likely that that tentativeness has probably now gone.

So, I would say we should look not at the period since Magnification but just slightly earlier, the period before Magnification. From Howe's return in the mid-nineties through to Magnification, the band was in that record/tour/record/tour cycle with the longest gap between records of 24 months from The Ladder to Magnification. Indeed, they did this while jumping between record labels. With greater stability through the relationship with Frontiers, it seems to me quite unsurprising that we should see a new album around mid-2013.