Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Kennedy, Myles
Label: Napalm Records
Release: 2018
Runtime: 50:40
Rating: 4.5/5
Myles Kennedy is the frontman of Alter Bridge, but his name really started turning heads once he joined forces with Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash. Kennedy is considered an exceptional singer. That’s no longer news. In any situation where he finds himself behind a mic, he breathes a unique stamp into the songs with his strongly expressive essence and vocal character. And since 2009, Kennedy has been gearing up to launch a solo career. Or to be more precise, since 2009 he’s been promising his solo studio debut.
Because the man is constantly insanely busy, we waited a good nine years. Kennedy is a huge perfectionist. He carefully paves the road to the finish line. The groundwork was serious, and a »hole« in his schedule had to finally appear from somewhere. The material for the debut was written and matured over a very long time, which is why it feels like an exceptionally polished and finished piece of work from start to end. Kennedy tries himself out here as a singer-songwriter, and the album carries a concept. In it, Kennedy goes back to his childhood. When he was five, his father died. The year was 1974, which in the Chinese horoscope is the year of the Tiger. Good thing it wasn’t the year of the Rat or the Pig, or Kennedy would very likely have had to rename his record. The story of the wounds that a sensitive artist’s soul like Myles Kennedy’s carries beneath the surface is thus »poured out« into a set of twelve tracks, superbly chosen for character, arrangement and expression.
In them, Kennedy flirts with folk music, the guitars stick to an acoustic sonic nature, the basic rhythms are often lively and reinforced with contrasting extra percussion, and the album is accompanied throughout by the wonderfully organic warmth of the bass guitar’s low, penetrating tones. Kennedy contrasts the compositions with interesting instruments that communicate extremely effectively in the arrangements. You have to work your way through the album for quite a while before you find a track that’s at least a tiny bit rock’n’roll tickly. The first one is Devil on the Wall, smack in the middle of the album. Kennedy reveals his vocal layering, and every single song carries its own crafted character, steered by this artist’s vocal delicacy and the elegance of short, concise moves and strokes of instrumental interplay that are incredibly soothing in their softness. The album calls for meaningful comparisons with some of Robert Plant’s work, even the folk-acoustic excursions of Led Zeppelin, like the ornament over the lead phrase in Love Can Only Heal, which fleetingly summons the Led Zeppelin song The Battle of Evermore from memory. It’s not hard to place it close to the work of the late Jeff Buckley either. So from these references alone, it’s clear that »Year of the Tiger« is an exceptional album. Alongside the unmistakable folk tunes, which the opening title track already flags, elements of classical music weave into the arrangements (The Great Beyond), you can pick up on »southern« moments (Blind Faith), the album trades successfully in blues rhetoric too (Nothing But A Name), and to a degree it teases with the distant sentimentality of a mild »grunge character in unplugged form«. Above all that, though, the result is something really special, and that’s its winning poker hand of aces.
Myles Kennedy’s vocal performance is in tight focus throughout. In an acoustic setting, the »brutal« truth of the concept gets magnified even more through subtle sensitivity and softness, and since the album is deeply personal, its emotional reach and the reach of the passions sung out are showcased to maximum effect. Optimized. As expected (given the album’s theme), the songs develop out of minor keys. Yes, the album is dark. That’s expected too. Put bluntly, this isn’t an album you’d expect to sound like what Alter Bridge would record without Tremonti on guitar, or what’s left of Slash’s Conspirators crew without Slash. This is a completely recognizable and special record that Myles Kennedy planned long and carefully, with its own essence and character. Fully singer-songwriter. An album that will seduce you and, in the eerie delicacy of its gorgeous, if not downright brilliant, confessional vocal character, completely enchant you.
Line-up
Myles Kennedy – vocals, guitar, banjo, lap steel, bass, mandolin
Zia Uddin – drums, percussion
Tim Tournier – bass
Michael “Elvis” Baskette – keyboards
Jef Moll – programming
Simon Dobson – string arrangements on “The Great Beyond”
Will Harvey – violin on “The Great Beyond”
Maddie Cutter – cello on “The Great Beyond”
Elitsa Bogdanova – viola on “The Great Beyond”
Production
Michael “Elvis” Baskette
Tracklist
1. Year of the Tiger (3:40)
2. The Great Beyond (4:50)
3. Blind Faith (4:29)
4. Devil on the Wall (3:44)
5. Ghost of Shangri La (3:32)
6. Turning Stones (3:38)
7. Haunted by Design (3:39)
8. Mother (3:42)
9. Nothing but a Name (5:00)
10. Love Can Only Heal (5:32)
11. Songbird (4:04)
12. One Fine Day (4:50)
