Strange Days

The Doors’ second album, Strange Days, continues to plunder the band’s early L.A. club repertoire. “Moonlight Drive” had been among the group’s earliest tunes and was given the full psychedelic treatment in the studio with Robbie Krieger’s hallucinatory guitar runs brilliantly complimenting singer Jim Morrison’s visions of sex and death. “You’re Lost Little Girl” emphasizes Morrison’s crooner ambitions, while “People Are Strange” is a hard-hitting piece of truth wrapped up as a pop song. “Horse Latitudes” is poetry backed by music concrete. “Love Me Two Times” is the perfect straightforward pop number, complete with Krieger’s guitar twirls. However, it’s the ominous keyboard-driven pop of the title track, “I Can’t See Your Face In My Mind” and “My Eyes Have Seen You” that present the Doors in the strongest form to date. The eleven minutes of “When the Music’s Over” remains one of the Doors’ most powerful and cathartic statements, riveting from its butterfly whisper to the scream of “We want the world and we want it now.”