ALBUM REVIEW: Myles Kennedy – Year of the Tiger

Earlier this year ‘Josh Todd and the Conflict’ debuted with ‘Year of the Tiger’  now here we are a few months later with another famous frontman using the same title for his debut solo album. I found myself checking when Todd released his album if I’d gotten my years wrong but no we’re still 4 years away from the next ‘Year of the Tiger’ and neither man was born in the year of the Tiger either (Kennedy being a Rooster and Todd a Dog in the Chinese horoscope).  It might therefore be just have been a case of wearing the same shirt to the party until you read the touching reason Kennedy gives for the title – the year he lost his father the event that really ties this collection together.

As a vocalist for me Kennedy is right up there with the best in Hard Rock and whilst Alter Bridge have been on an ever increasing upward arc especially over recent releases most still know him best from his work with Slash. Here he finally gets a chance to be himself and as he says in the liner notes he’d already written one solo album over the space of seven years then “thrown it away.” He adds that “I thought it wasn’t the right first step to take in this journey – its shelf life had expired0”

‘Take two’ appears to be all present and correct and it makes you wonder what if anything was left of that original work? Maybe a riff here? A lyric there? It appears the answer is that there was nothing as Kennedy admits to “writing like a madman” as more than twenty songs spilled out in a short period of time.

So what re we left with? What’s made it from that second outpouring? In truth it’s a rather diverse and ultimately rewarding collection, but it is at times a painful and emotional ride as ‘Year of the Tiger’, it turns out is an album almost entirely focused on the loss of Kennedy’s father when the singer was just four years old. “This was something I had wanted to dive into throughout my career,” he states. “It just took decades to muster up the courage. Beneath the surface, the wounds were pretty raw, but it just had to be done.”