Reviewed by Thom Bowers
Released: November 1 1982 Night Ranger Dawn Patrol Genre: Hair Metal Icing Over A Musically Multitasking Cake Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5 Thom's Rating 4.25 out of 5 Highlights: Don't Tell Me You Love Me Sing Me Away Call My Name Penny I came to Night Ranger [1] backwards, through my Damn Yankees fandom in the early 90s. Jack Blades is a marvelously fun frontman, and the DY treatment of a handful of his tunes got me interested enough to check out the back catalog, where I found many a gem. I knew about them already, of course. "Sister Christian" was inescapable on MTV and AM radio. And as a hard rock devotee in the later 80s, I was always on the lookout for impressive guitar pyrotechnics, which these guys certainly had in spades. But beyond the hammer-ons and hairdos, they didn't seem to be cut from the same cloth as the rest of that crowd. They came across ... older, I guess? Which they certainly were, if only by a few years, but the music felt that way, too. The bombastic guitar leads seemed more based in ornamentation than composition. The singers had earthier, huskier voices than the popular power tenors of the times. Like The Police pretending to be punks, the band's marketing and their actual vibe weren't quite in sync. Which didn't make the tunes any less enjoyable, it was just ... odd. When you consider how many hats the core three members of the band - Jack Blades (bass/vox), Kelly Keaggy (drums/vox) and Brad Gillis (guitar) - wore throughout their musical partnership prior to forming Ranger* 1980 with guitarist Jeff Watson and keyboard player Alan Fitzgerald, it makes more sense. Fine players all, but whether dabbling in Clinton-esque funk with Rubicon, or taking a stab at Cars-ish new wave in Stereo, they seemed to have trouble deciding on a collective identity. Songwriters whose strongest work most closely resembled 70s AOR but missed that boat by thiiiiis much, and didn't know how best to employ their talents going forward. Maybe Gillis's stint as Ozzy Osbourne's lead guitarist put the lightbulb over their heads? Dunno. You can hear vestiges of that journey in Dawn Patrol's track list. "Eddie's Comin' Out Tonight" has the spooky shred of something Gillis might have played with Ozzy, while "Penny" verges on Springfieldian power-pop. The rogue synth in "At Night She Sleeps" cuts against the stock guitar grain in a way that hints with maybe a few different knob tweaks, it could have been a Duran Duran or Thompson Twins song. "Call My Name" has the same core elements that would define their big radio ballads to come, but employs them in a shaggier, indulgent, almost art-rocky way. The big hits are, well, the big hits. Well constructed, catchy and confident as heck. "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" in particular gets a lot of mileage out of its turbo charged Hotel California chorus, with Gillis and Watson making a formidable fretboard team: speedy and melodic, powerful and poppy, each with a distinct style and tone that simultaneously complements and competes. Sing Me Away's relatively aggressive verses give way to a gentler chorus that somehow doesn't let the energy down as a result. Nice trick if you can pull it off, and not nearly as easy as they make it sound. The whole record is full of these fun little incongruities, colorful pops of personality that keep me coming back all these years later. Even the lesser offerings have hooks that, while not as memorable, certainly don't wear out their welcome for the duration of the tune. Dawn Patrol may be neither fish nor fowl at times, but it's darned tasty all the same. ********** 1. The "Night" was added at the last minute, when the band got slapped with a copyright lawsuit from a country band called Ranger just prior to Dawn Patrol's release. Rumors persist of advance pressings of the album floating around with the old name/logo printed on the sleeve.
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