Search - Doors :: Strange Days

Absolutely rules

finulanu | Here, there, and everywhere | 06/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Weird, dark, catchy, and cool as hell. See, while I do have a bit of a "Doors are overrated" thing going on, I do pretty much love this album, with the lone exception of the awful poetry recitation "Horse Latitudes". Basically, this takes the vision of the debut to the extreme. Nothing light. No polka. Some cabaret, but no polka. "Moonlight Drive", the title track, "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind" and "You're Lost Little Girl" are the highlights of the whole "dark pop" vibe this album has going on - weird, trippy lyrics, haunting slide guitars, and irresistible melodies. These songs do not leave your head. The marimba part on "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind" is sweet, too. Of course, there's not just dark pop, there's also dark blues-rock. Who can resist, for instance, the big hit "Love Me Two Times"? Great riff, a random harpsichord part that has no place in a blues song but sounds amazing nonetheless, and Jim Morrison's charisma carrying the song. You want more of that? How about "My Eyes Have Seen You"? Build the tension, build it, build it, build it... RELEASE! And what about the cabaret? I'll tell you what about the cabaret. On "People Are Strange", Ray Manzarek pulls every bizarre, kitschy keyboard he's got out of storage and eats acid with Jim. Both of them freak out, and the result is one of the Doors' best singles. It might even be better than "Love Me Two Times"! But neither of them beat "When the Music's Over", my pick for the Doors' best extended piece. It's got a kinetic, almost acid-jazz groove, with chaotic fuzzy guitars, and enough vocal prowess to keep you listening. Cool lyrics, too! There's even a bass in there. And crazy drumming. This might be the Doors' best album, and it's certainly their definitive one."

Strange days have found us

A.J.H. Woodcount | 11/11/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Strange days have found us



Together with the first one, this second album of the Doors shows the band in it's most wellknown period and sound. You can call it the basic Doors. When Morrison sings in Strange Days: `we shall go on playing or find a new town', I always think of Paris were I've seen his grave on Père La Chaise. The playing had stopped; he found a new town were his playing stopped definitively... (When you're on the graveyard his grave isn't hard to find. You just follow the marks other Doors-fans left to show you the way.)

Strange days is one of my favourite Doors-songs because of the way the strangeness of life in a great combination of music and lyrics is brought to us. Especialy when the song is played we have to agree: this certainly is the strangest life we've ever known. The album has more moments with that nice touch of melancholic filosophy.

There are some down to earth songs on the record too: You're Lost Little Girl and Unhappy Girl are typical Doors-songs about love/women with a little twist. Love Me Two Times is a nice little blues with the small touch of male-ignorance a good blues should always have: `one for tomorrow and one just for today'. Moonlight Drive is maybe not as striking as some other Doors-material, but it has a very consequent metafore in it. (Lesser Gods on the poetic stage tend to forget what metafore they using halfway their lyrics.) As a not native speaker I liked to sing along with the `going down'-part at the end of the song with a low voice, without thinking about what it meant. Well, let's put it like this: when they've managed to swim to the moon and climb to the sky, they have to come down again. Morrison was a decent man.

Horse Latitudes is more poetry and free-`jazz' than rock. The contrast of down-to-earth (blues) material and the `stranger' music that is typical for all Doors-albums is very much present on this album. Horse Latitudes is placed between the two earlier mentioned blues songs.

The almost simplesounding song People Are Strange has the same contrast. The music is very happy but when you take the lyrics seriously there's nothing happy about this song. It's wellknown:

`people are strange, when you're a stranger

faces look ugly when you're alone

women seem wicked when you're unwanted

streets are uneven when you're down'

You should compare the lyrics to L'America of the album L.A. Woman (see my review).

`friendly strangers came to town

all the people put them down

but the women love their ways

come again some other day'

At least the women started to like the unwanted.



The two lovesongs that follow have the same theme but they contradict eachother in a way. I'm talking about My Eyes Have Seen You and I Can't See Your Face In My Mind. The lyrics are still allright considering the fact that they're just two lovesongs.

But then something happens. Manzarek digs deep inside his organ and there it is: When The Music's Over. Another song of great theatrical suspence and terribly good lyrics. Songs like this had never been done before, exept by the Doors themselves in The End. The tension in this song reaches it's highest point when the music dies out and we `hear a very geantle sound'...'we want the world and we want it...'

Since I know songs like this exist, I've been looking for them. There's not much around. I found one band that can play the same trick on me as The Doors did when I was about 15 years old. There an instrumtal band tough. A jazzband from Scandinavia, called the Esbjorn Svensson Trio. See them live and find out what I mean. They're coming to America soon. Great pianojazz with large themes and mystical enchanting rythms and compositions with heavy parts and still parts, freaky things and clean things, sweeping you off your feet.

"