Love Is A River, the keynote track on Steve Howe’s first solo album since 2011’s Time, never quite does what you expect it to from one moment to the next. There are lovely hooks and melodies and refrains in there, but the structure of this six-minute song resists, at all points, doing what any songwriting craftsman’s textbook would. Let that charming guitar line settle in? No, move on. Repeat that kind of chorus section? Don’t be daft; maybe later. Do four of these motifs? Nah, how about three, or one?
It’s this restless refusal to do the obvious, or even the sensible, which has always distinguished Yes from the run of the mill. And more often than not, their mercurial musical decisions have involved their longtime guitarist. On occasion, sure,…