TYKETTO: "Dig In Deep"

Rating: 7/10

Label: Frontiers 2012

Review by Kimmo Toivonen

Tyketto's first album "Don't Come Easy" (1991) should have made them superstars, and songs like "Forever Young" and "Wings" should have been chart-topping hits. As it turned out, the album and its' songs became much-loved favourites but only among the die-hard hard rock fans. Whether it was the turning tide in the music biz or the teen spirit or whatever is quite irrelevant now, what's more important is that the "Don't Come Easy" line-up of Danny Vaughn, Michael Clayton, Jimi Kennedy and Brooke St. James (plus a new keyboard player Bobby Lynch) is back with a new album.

Clicheed as it may sound, but I feel that "Dig In Deep" is a natural-sounding successor to the first two Tyketto albums. 20 years have passed and understandably this has affected the band's sound and songwriting, but the core elements of Tyketto are still evident. None of the songs have the urgency and magic of those early Tyketto classics, but they're good in their own, more subtle way. Danny Vaughn's excellent lyrics are one of the band's strengths, there aren't enough "storytellers" like him in melodic rock these days. It's his lyrics that raise some of the weaker tracks to a higher level.

The production has recieved some criticism, but for what it's worth, I think the album sounds good and natural. More "classic rock" than "glossy melodic hard rock" I would say. Maybe a little more "gloss" here and there wouldn't have been out of place though. Anyway, the band plays well and Vaughn puts in a superb performance as usual, he still remains one of my all-time favourite vocalists.

The album's standout track for me is the powerful and catchy opener "Faithless". To be frank, the album could've used a couple of other similary strong tracks. Instead the band offers us several nice, more or less acoustically driven songs like "Battlelines", "Here's Hoping It Hurts" and "Evaporate". They're all good, but somehow I was hoping for more. I really wanted to love this album, now I "only" like it...

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