WAITING FOR THE SUN

Having attempted to record Jim Morrison's sprawling poetic saga The Celebration of the Lizard as a side-long epic, only to conclude that it simply didn't work in that format, the Doors were left scrambling to complete sufficient material for their third album. The upshot of this is that two more of their early songs were pulled out of the vault, thoroughly revised, and recorded for the first time to fill the gap - Hello I Love You and Summer's Almost Gone - and the album was one of their shortest. It was also something of a departure from their previous work - as well as the placid Summer's Almost Gone, tracks like Love Street, Wintertime Love, and Yes the River Knows made this the Doors' most mellow, laid-back album, often meandering away from the brooding, passionate intensity that made their first two albums so compelling.

The Doors in a romantic mood works better than expected; most of the quiet tracks are quite beautiful, and it's not as though the album is entirely without grit - the shrieking close to Hello I Love You is as demented as anything on the first two albums, Not To Touch the Earth (a fragment of The Celebration of the Lizard) represents some of Morrison's creepiest poetry, and final track Five to One is one of the most threatening songs the band would ever record. But that said, the album still shows a certain lack of polish here and there which stops it attaining a perfect score; Not to Touch the Earth might have good lyrics but the musical backing is not interesting, and Spanish Caravan likewise isn't especially interesting - in fact, several of the second side tracks (including Five to One) tend to blend together into one mass.

A little bit more lightweight and forgettable than the earlier Doors albums, Waiting For the Sun still has a lot to recommend it. It's just a shame the band wasted so much time chasing the lizard.