Lightning Strikes Again

First off, let me say Dokken has taken a lot of crap in this decade and I want to state clearly that most of it is truly unfair. It is true that he has lost some of his range, but he has carried on making good music when most of his contemporaries have long since quit. Don has clearly moved on and with Levin has found a guitarist every bit Lynch's equal, if not better. The music on this disc is beyond reproach. There is no way you could be a Dokken fan and be unhappy with these songs. And the singing isn't the problem here either. At least not entirely. (Pay attention Don, this is a fixable problem) What gives these songs a marked difference from earlier Dokken works is the back up vocals. Maybe to compensate for losing access to some of the higher register of his voice, maybe because he thinks it's more modern, for whatever reason, Don has arranged almost all of his songs in the last ten years to have low harmonies in the choruses instead of the layered high harmonies that were prevalent in the 80s. It's not "wrong," but it changes the tone dramatically. The classic Dokken formula requires that the verses build up to the chorus, and when the tone goes down instead of up, it loses momentum. On this record he brought in Jeff Scott Soto for back ups, and even though he's a great singer, it didn't help the problem because the arrangements are the same. He still had him doing a low harmony. If these same choruses were remixed with someone like Michael Anthony or Tony Harnell doing the harmony an octave up instead of an octave down ... These songs would have the more immediate payoff that I think people are missing. It's a small detail, but it does take a toll on the impact of the finished project. I think the songs would be better that way, but these are still good songs. And this is still a good album. --Scott