Richie Kotzen's new solo album "Change" features Richie exploring various musical genres. Everything is written, performed and produced by Mr. Kotzen himself.
Richie has wisely focused on the song writing instead of unfolding his talent on the six-string with endless solos. Richie is not the greatest singer, but his light vocal fits the music perfectly. "Change" has been a pleasant surprise mainly caused by the strong rock tracks kick-starting the album.
Forever One has a hard edge guitar introducing a modern Rock style. The solo is really good, but never looses focus away from the fact that
Forever One is a brilliant modern Rock song with a great chorus.
Get a Life is catchy as hell. The song has a great hook and overall melodic pop/Rock with hit-potential. Richie's vocals are polished but they suit this style great. The absolute highlight of the album is
Don't Ask, which is one of my candidates for song of the year. The lyrics are simply amazing and the smooth melody of the verse plus the irresistible chorus makes you put this song on repeat.
Overall this is a pretty good album, which keeps getting better. Because of the diverse styles, it took a while to tolerance the whole album. At the same time, the lack of consistency is also the album's weakness. After the fantastic start, the album does not manage to capture the excitement all the way. Both the ballad
High and the soul inspired
Deeper are good diverse tracks. I even like the Latin Ricky Martin /Santana inspired
Am I Dreamin' because of the great chorus and Richie's playing on a nylon strung Spanish guitar. However, I have a hard time adapting to
Fast Money Fast Cars, which sounds like the pop music, that floods the European airwaves.
Unity is an instrumental Jazz Bee Bop song, which displays Richie as a skilled guitarist. Since we already knew that -
Unity is needles and puts a sleepy finish to the album.
Next time I would love to hear a full album with songs rooted in the modern Rock style that characterized the first 4 songs. I can only imagine what a strong album that would have been.
This is an album that I have been playing quite often and will continue to play because of
Forever One and
Don't Ask, which are phenomenal.
Written by
Michael Tuesday, August 26, 2003
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