Unearthed, Vol. 2 – Y&T

A follow-up to Dave Meniketti's first trawl through the Y&T tape vaults, Unearthed, Vol. 2 contains 18 more Y&T songs recorded at various points between 1973 (when they were a Bay Area hard rock band called Yesterday & Today) and 1989 (the end of their largely failed Geffen-era attempt at an Aerosmith-style comeback appealing to the hair-farmer audience). The album opens with the snarling "Face to Face," a riff-rocker co-written by Ronnie Montrose of the titular band with whom Y&T were most often compared in the early days, and skips around non-chronologically from there. Highlights include early versions of a few familiar tunes: "Dance Dance Dance" was eventually re-recorded in 1987 as "L.A. Rocks," but this rougher-edged version is superior, as is the original acoustic version of "Hands of Time," which smokes the later power ballad version that appeared on a charity compilation in the late '80s. Meniketti's impressively honest liner notes promise a warts-and-all listening experience, the most bumpy-sounding being the sluggish, overlong "More" and "Help Me Hear Me," which is rather blatantly ripped off from Deep Purple's "Gypsy." ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide