If you view The Very Best of Yes as a singles sampler, not an attempt to offer a thorough overview of Yes' doggedly album-oriented career, this 11-track collection is actually quite successful, offering the bulk of the band's best-known songs, from "I've Seen All Good People," "Roundabout," and "Long Distance Runaround" to "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Leave It." It's sequenced chronologically, too, which gives some sense of the band's development. Therefore, for the curious, this offers a nice snapshot of what Yes did throughout the '70s and into the mid-'80s.

In many Yes fans' eyes, the group will never issue a live album better than their 1973 classic, Yessongs. But the group has issued quite a few subsequent live sets, and as evidenced by 2007's Live at Montreux 2003, Yes remain one of prog rock's top live bands. Live at Montreux features arguably their definitive lineup (Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman, and Alan White) and a few newer tracks are included, but Yes are no fools - they know that longtime fans expect to hear the classics. Nearly all of Yes' classics from the early '70s are here in solid/spirited renditions, including "Long Distance Runaround," "I've Seen All Good People," and "Roundabout"…

Yesterdays is a pleasant but minor compilation of early Yes cuts. Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman put in an appearance on an up-tempo art-rock reworking of Paul Simon's "America"; listen for Bill Bruford's wah-wah bongos. The rest of this record is largely a showcase for the shunned talents of Tony Kaye and Peter Banks, although the song selections pass over the edgier material in favor of hazy tunes like "Survival."…

The second official concert package from Yes contains tunes recorded over a span of two years (1976-1978) and two different incarnations of the band. Like its live predecessor Yessongs (1973), Yesshows finds the combo during one of their states of perpetual change. Jon Anderson (vocals), Steve Howe (guitar), Chris Squire (bass/vocals), and Alan White (drums) are joined by Rick Wakeman (keyboards) on a majority of the selections…

Decades after its release, Tales from Topographic Oceans is still the most controversial record in Yes' output. This was the place where Yes either fulfilled all of the promise shown on their previous five albums or slid off the rails in a fit of artistic hubris, especially on the part of lead singer Jon Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe, who dominated the composition credits here…

Yes had fallen out of critical favor with Tales from Topographic Oceans, a two-record set of four songs that reviewers found indulgent. But they had not fallen out of the Top Ten, and so they had little incentive to curb their musical ambitiousness. Relayer, released 11 months after Tales, was a single-disc, three-song album, its music organized into suites that alternated abrasive, rhythmically dense instrumental sections featuring solos for the various instruments with delicate vocal and choral sections featuring poetic lyrics devoted to spiritual imagery…