The more Glass Hammer went on in their career, the more they were Yes-oriented in their music. The album "If" could easily be a Yes' outtakes collection, but please take my opinion in its positive sense. This "Beyond, Within", the opening song of the album, for example, is an excellent song, both structurally unpredictable and rhytmically dynamic. All is "Yes" here, sure, but never a bare replica of the band's most important model. Take Jon Davison's voice: it surely sounds a lot like Jon Anderson's (and he subsequently won the biggest prize to be the third lead singer of Yes), but it also has its own character, more stingy and jazzy than Jon's, maybe more dynamic and certainly less heavenly.
"If" was Glass Hammer's eleventh studio album.
The track is perfectly balanced in its fast and slow moments and the band plays in admirable harmony, always giving to each instrument its own and well deserved space. Last but not least, the sung and instrumental themes are very, very good ones, and this is one of the best reasons to buy a record, after all.
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