L.A. WOMAN

The Doors died creatively during the recording sessions of the "Waiting for the Sun" album. To be fair, both the "Soft Parade" and "Morrison Hotel" albums contain remnants of good material (Touch Me and Wild Child from TSP and Waiting For The Sun and Peace Frog from MH) but by the time that "LA Woman" was released the band was effectively dead and buried with its leader no longer performing with the band (soon to die in Paris) and the remaining members of the band exhausted of musical ideas (as evidenced in the two embarrassing post Morrison albums). LA Woman plays like a Jim Morrison solo album with Morrison's voice dominating the whole album. His voice is less attractive now, a bit more raspy and deeper in keeping with the mostly bluesy material of the album, leaving behind the psychedelic rock arrangements of Strange Days forever. There is still poetry there in songs like Riders On The Storm but they pale in comparison to the great Morrison tone poems, The End, When The Music's Over and Celebration Of The Lizard. Love Her Madly and LA Woman are my favorite tracks off the album, but I prefer to be challenged by more complex material.