STRANGE DAYS

Overall Rating: 13/15

Best Song: Tough, babe. Maybe a triple threat between When The Music's Over, You're Lost Little Girl, and People Are Strange....

...or hell, maybe Love Me Two Times. What do I know, anyway?

It definitely ain't Horse Latitudes, unless we're going for that oh-so-acclaimed "idiosyncratic" attribute, which this album has in mother-effing loads, dude. What it is, is it is, it is, is it is? It's the Doors' second album, and the one that totally always gets utterly overshadowed by their publicly monolithic debut. And I gotta say something right now that's going to shock everyone! (not really) This is even better than their debut! Gasp, what dire blasphemies is this nutcase spewin', huh? Well, pals, it's just got more moments that make me go "wowee zowee, this is fun as hell". Now, enough of that nonsense, let's get to something serious.

Holy crap, Horse Latitudes is about drowning horseys! Oh god, where is PETA when you need 'em? This sick Morrison fellow needs to be locked away. What? You say he's dead already? Gee, guess PETA works pretty quick.

Like I said, Strange Days is all the fun of their Debut, without a single generic bloozer to duff your muff, McGruff. You also get what I easily call the "Door" factor, that's one hundred percent, undiluted, raucous carnivalesque psychedelic blues rock, oozing in theatrical darkness and a li'l thing I like to call good melodic sense. Man, the opening title track might not scream at you, but it sure will show a little leg to get you to come on in and have a good time in Captain Morrison's Six Ring Satanic Sircus. There is the requisite instance of morbid beauty in You're Lost Little girl, with those candy cane melodies leading you into the dark, ominous woods, alone. Yeah, Love Me Two Times has that rollicking roll riff that waltzes along so good, brother. There aren't any real weak moments, and even the silly poem about dying animals just NEEDS to be there, because it's just not a classic Doors album without him reciting drowning horse poetry, or screaming ludicrous desires to screw his own mother, or any number of momentous musical occasions, bub. Take it like good, dark medicine, I say.

Moonlight Drive did seem kinda poppy at first, until the band leads us all into that grandiose, tense buildup. I love it! Yeah, this would be just a super perfect album if it didn't have a few of those "generic blues shuffle" moments left in them where the melody doesn't exactly go much of anywhere. You know what I mean. Probably not. I'm talking about duff stuff like the main theme to Unhappy Girl, before it goes into the coolio soloing, or the first minute of Moonlight Drive. Yeah, this is such a solid album, I gotta pick out weak song segments, and not actual songs. It's very tops, if you know what I'm saying. People Are Strange has such an intriguing melody that wraps around my head, as it drifts between cavorting death polka and eerie morose crooning. What a band!

I haven't even talked about the epic When The Music's Over, which absolutely rips The End to shreds, no joke. It's got raving soloing, some cookin' jams, at least three classic melodies smacked right in thar, and all in the confines of 10 minutes, baby. Is it the best song they ever did? No, that's doubtful, these fellows were quite prolific in the early days, still, all of it adds up to a bruttaly wonderful cap to the Doors' shining moment in my utterly worthless opinion. If you only get one Doors album, make it this one. But, if you only get one Doors album, you're very dumb, the end.

*****

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