This album has its origins in Jon Anderson connecting up with Richie Castellano and the Band Geeks. He’d heard them playing Yes tunes and, says Anderson, “it freaked me out how good they were, so I contacted the bassist (Castellano) and asked if they’d be interested in going out and doing some epics and classics, to which they agreed.” The result was a 2023 tour where they performed classic Yes tunes to great acclaim, and now, in 2024, they’ve come up with an album of their own music together.
Jon Anderson, of course, needs no introduction. He’s one of the main creative forces behind prog legends Yes, wholly / partly responsible for classics like ‘Awaken,’ ‘And You And I,’ ‘Wondrous Stories’ etc. His voice is one of the most distinctive in prog, and even as he approaches his eightieth year, his voice still has resonance and he can hit high notes without undue strain.
True is an outstanding piece of music, a nine-track album which harkens back to the seventies, when Yes were in their imperious prime as prog overlords, with a few subtle nods to their early 80’s 90125 period. The level of musicianship involved in The Geeks is truly astounding. Just listen to the musical interplay on the sixteen-minute epic, ‘Once Upon A Dream,’ with outstanding performances right the way through. The Geeks can certainly play and they’ve evoked the spirit of 1970s Yes music extremely well, but it’s only when Anderson’s voice is added to the mix that something really happens and for younger fans, it offers an opportunity to hear what Yes might have sounded like had Anderson and Yes not parted ways as they did.
‘Counties and Countries’ is heavily Yes influenced and the album opener, ‘True Messenger,’ is one of the best songs Yes never recorded and easily on a par with anything the current Yes have done in recent times .. few Yes fans have anything good to say about 2014’s Heaven And Earth. That Anderson was a major creative force behind Yes can be heard on tracks like the spiritually inclined ‘Build Me An Ocean’ and the slightly heavier ‘Still A Friend,’ with ‘Dear God’ being a song where Anderson gives thanks to the one he loves.
A band with a nucleus of Jon Anderson and the bassist/keyboard player in Blue Oyster Cult, Richie Castellano, may sound like an odd pairing, but Anderson moves in mysterious ways and, on True, they’ve combined well to show they can really put something good together. It’s almost perfect symmetry .. Anderson was replaced in Yes by a singer from a Yes tribute band, and now he has his own ‘sort-of’ tribute band to Yes, albeit one operating on a much higher plane.
