{"id":610,"date":"2011-09-28T05:01:28","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T10:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=610"},"modified":"2026-07-29T07:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T11:43:14","slug":"cd-review-circa-and-so-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/28\/cd-review-circa-and-so-on\/","title":{"rendered":"CD Review: CIRCA: – And So On"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve long been a fan of Pete Frame<\/strong>\u2019s rock family trees. Frame has a way of untangling the knotty threads of who-played-with-whom and presenting the information in a distinctive visual format. But even the redoubtable Frame would have a tough time keeping up with the members of Yes<\/strong> (don\u2019t even get me started on King Crimson<\/strong><\/a>). In 2011 alone, there are new albums from Yes themselves (the best-in-decades Fly From Here<\/em>), Survival And Other Stories<\/em> from Jon Anderson<\/strong>, Levin Torn White<\/em> featuring Yes\u2019 drummer of the last thirty-nine years), and a few I\u2019m certain I\u2019ve missed.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s frequent lineup changes have also intertwined its history inextricably with Asia<\/strong><\/a>, King Crimson and other bands. It\u2019s enough to give ol\u2019 Pete a headache. But if one sets all (or some) of that aside and gets down to the music, there are some interesting things going on.<\/p>\n

One of these is an outfit called CIRCA:<\/strong> (the colon is part of the name, but to avoid a headache of my own, I\u2019ll not <\/em>be using it throughout the remainder of this essay). Featuring Billy Sherwood<\/strong> on bass and vocals (though he played guitar and keys during his time with Yes) and original Yes keyboard player Tony Kaye<\/strong>, the group also includes guitarist Johnny Bruhns<\/strong> on guitar (he played on the Yes Union<\/em> tour, but then so did about a bajillion other people) and a drummer noted on the packaging only as Ronnie<\/strong> (since, it seems, replaced by a Scott Connor<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Slightly faraway, disembodied vocals are a hallmark of several tracks on And So On<\/em>. At its best, Sherwood\u2019s voice sounds a bit like Gary Wright<\/a> <\/strong>crossed with Peter Gabriel<\/strong>. Another consistent thread across the album is Sherwood\u2019s very Chris Squire<\/strong><\/a>-ish bass playing. With song construction that\u2019s a shade less \u201cprogressive\u201d than what one might find on a Yes album \u2013 take the midtempo pop song \u201cNotorious\u201d as an example \u2013 that approach enlivens And So On<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Within the context of Yes, Kaye was always underrated as a keyboard player, overshadowed by Rick Wakeman<\/strong>\u2019s much more aggressively showy style. On And So On<\/em>, his style is matched more closely to the material. His organ runs fit nicely behind Aerosmith<\/strong>-style riffage on \u201cHalf Way Home.\u201d Steve Howe<\/strong>\u2019s acoustic spotlights on Yes albums have long been a highlight of those discs, and CIRCA\u2019s version of that approach here is called \u201cIn My Sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrue Progress\u201d is a chunky rocker that places the focus on distorted organ runs and a dynamic arrangement; seven tracks in, it\u2019s the strongest number on And So On<\/em>. Perhaps not coincidentally, it\u2019s also the most progressive piece on the album, moving through several distinct, er, movements.<\/p>\n

The dreamy \u201cCast Away\u201d is built upon a bass line reminiscent of Alan Parsons Project<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cBreakdown.\u201d None of the tracks stand out as stellar numbers along the lines of \u201cThe Man I Always Wanted to Be\u201d on Yes\u2019 Fly From Here<\/em>, but neither are any of the tracks throwaways. Expecting something as distinctive as the sort of thing Yes or King Crimson creates is an impossibly high standard, so I won\u2019t be unfair to CIRCA. Weighed on its own merits, And So On<\/em> is meat-and-potatoes prog-inflected mainstream rock with tight, expert (and occasionally inventive) playing, marred only slightly by relatively anonymous vocals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve long been a fan of Pete Frame\u2019s rock family trees. Frame has a way of untangling the knotty threads of who-played-with-whom and presenting the information in a distinctive visual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32043,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/32043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}