Endangered Species

Endangered Species is a record on which Y&T brought together thick riffs, blues-rooted guitar and Dave Meniketti’s heated singing. The songs do not chase flash alone, letting you hear the depth of a long-running band through mid-tempo tenacity and the ache of the melody. In the late 1990s, they present the fusion of their roots — hard rock and blues — in a more matured form. On “Hello, Hello (I'm Back Again),” “Black Gold,” “Can't Stop the Rain” and “Voices,” the raw feel of a live band and the persuasiveness in each note of the guitar stand out. A lyrical song like “I Wanna Cry” brings out Meniketti’s expressive singing too. Holding Y&T’s rock line to the end without drifting on the trends of the era, it is a flavorful record conveying a veteran band’s underlying strength.