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I'm personally pretty impressed with the new album and would say it slightly edges out their first effort in my opinion. Although none of the songs, except "When I Grow Up", even come close to approaching the pop perfection of any of the singles from their debut, I would say that the overall quality of Doll Domination is slightly higher simply because there are no flat-out bad tracks, which were quite common on the latter half of PCD. I'm glad they left out the covers for this album in favour of solely contemporary tracks, because although they fit in well with the original, pre-girl group Pussycat Doll image, they weren't well-updated enough to compete with their first album's original material.
For me, the standouts from Doll Domination are mostly the ballad work ("I'm Done" is especially gorgeous, as well as "I Hate This Part") and the two tracks that were originally supposed to be on Nicole's solo album, "Happily Never After" and "Who's Gonna Love You". Admittedly though, I actually prefer the more repetitive but much slicker fan-made extended mix of "Who's Gonna Love You" from forever ago. The actual final version kind of goes downhill about halfway through, and the whole outro is pretty bad in my opinion. I'm also probably one of the few people who likes "Out of This Club". It's dumb, but very fun and listenable, and the album version sounds slightly less sparse than the leaked version, which is rather nice.
Aside from the mid-tempo songs and ballads, I really liked "Whatchmacallit", one of the few songs that is actually camp, fun, and actually made with PCD in mind, not just a song made for the revised Her Name Is Nicole then moved up to the PCD album instead. With that being said, it does suffer from a lack of a proper chorus, a problem that plagues the bulk of the album.
Another highlight was "Halo", probably the best "Cry Me a River" clone since "What Goes Around". I loved the Timbo tracks in general, and it seems to me that his sound has actually progressed with this material for the first time since 2006.
Finally, I have to mention the embaressing bonus disc. Like I said before, Kimberly's song is magical, mainly because I have a twisted sense of humour. Anyone who keeps demanding to know why only Nicole sings shold be silenced once they hear it. The other girls suck. Vocally, of course.
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