The Doors
Strange Days

THE REVIEW

After a sensational debut like "The Doors," the obvious path was to strike while the iron was hot and attempt to make another album of the same caliber, and indeed "Strange Days" manages not to make us miss its predecessor too much. It's an excellent album, where the hallucinatory tone of certain songs from the first is practically extended to the entire album, even if not always with brilliant results.

It starts off brilliantly: "Strange Days," after the flamboyant organ intro, introduces us to an unreal world, from which emerges Jim Morrison's voice, which already seems to come from remote depths, and is further subjected to an eerie echo effect, without hindering the listening experience of the track, quite the contrary. Immediately afterward, an obsessive and sinister bass line announces the twisted and desperate melody of "You're Lost Little Girl," one of the songs where Jim Morrison gives his best with his now proverbial macabre tone, enhanced by the crisp, sadly metallic resonances of Krieger's guitar, which add much to this splendid track. Then the energy dips a bit, but never too much: "Love Me Two Times" revisits the more classic blues-rock patterns, but with unusual frenzy and ruthlessness, and with a touch of genius like the lightning-fast harpsichord-like central keyboard solo, a true devilry from Manzarek.
"Unhappy Girl" and "Moonlight Drive" (the latter being one of Morrison’s earliest poems, set to music for the occasion) are strongly marked by Krieger's typical, distorted Hawaiian-style guitars, which in the second manage to unleash genuine howls. "People Are Strange" initially seems like a catchy little song, but soon veers into the world of hallucinations, as does "My Eyes Have Seen You," which transforms from simple rock into an angry outburst.

The last part faithfully echoes the first LP: "I Can't See Your Face In My Mind" introduces the same surreal world of "End Of The Night," and does so quite well, though without the spine-chilling sensations of the original.
Finally, this album also features an apocalyptic final nightmare, coincidentally 11 minutes long like "The End": it's called "When The Music's Over." A comparison with the sophisticated and sublime torture of the first album is inevitable, but these are two rather different compositions: the absolute, breathless despair of "The End" is replaced by a hard and concrete rage, which from the initial demonic scream to the end characterizes this second (and last) episode of the Doors' musical journey into the unconscious.
The abundant contribution of the drums, the beautiful central solo of the electric keyboards, the predominance of the scream over the dull whisper in Morrison's voice, make this nightmare more realistic but a bit less evocative than the previous one.