Strange Days

The cover art is one of the best and most appropriate covers I have ever seen for an album. The cover gives you a glimpse into what you will find on the album: a freakshow, a world where people are trying to find their own way and how the generation gap grew leaps and bounds in the 1960s. The cover art tells us we a long way from the staunch, McCarthy-driven 1950s, where the world made a lot more sense to people. Albums like this would never have been released during the 1940s and 1950s. Just by looking at the cover, you could tell this was a radical departure from the musical sensibilities of the preceeding decade. This definitely isn't your parent's music.

What makes STRANGE DAYS so revelatory is how undeniably dark this is. In many ways, this very dark undercurrent makes the music on STRANGE DAYS all the more radical. Released at the height of the "All you need is love" mentality embraced by much of the counterculture, The Doors offer this visionary music. Buy wedding dark, deeply apocalyptic lyrics and very moody, depressing music to very poppy elements and consistently stunning melodies, The Doors present a very different and much more dangerous picture of society. Much of the genius of STRANGE DAYS is, while it is very poppy, it totally reinvents the subject matter of pop, creating an aural snapshot of the fear, uncertainty, and growing social and political unrest that was rapidly spreading throughout the youth in the 1960s. While The Beatles were singing it's getting better, The Doors, much like T. S. Eliot, were expressing fear and isolation and confronting the dark undercurrents of their time.

All of these elements, along with The Doors' unique sound and undeniably powerful musical talents, make STRANGE DAYS one of rock's most essential albums. Although I prefer the debut to this for sentimental reasons, The Doors never equaled this masterpiece again. They simply could not maintain the densely rich, dark atmosphere, the genius song-writing, or the fantastic psychedelia. This, along with THE DOORS, stand tall among the very best that rock has to offer.


Like when u first realized a clown wasn't actually smiling.   November 9, 2004
Ulven (australia)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

The strangeness of this album is indicated not merely by the title, but also by the obscure photography source.'Alabama Song', from the first album, is a compostion by a strange musician from early century Germany named Kurt Weill, and was originally sung by his wife, the gritty songstress Lotte Lenya.This street on the cover, is where Weill and Lenya were prominently photographed.The Doors were obviously quite taken by this unusual looking place.The characters spookily and humourously gracing this street here on "Strange Days", further enhance the European sentiments of this album.The Doors are of course, an American rock group.But the underlaying mood is here is most definitely not of Americam typicality.The cynicism of the Berlin cabaret scene, of which 'Alabama Song' is an infamous part, runs steadily through almost every song on "Strange Days".A cynicism, which is in contrast to the slick pizazz of the Broadway cabaret culture of the Doors' countrymen.
The man with the fingers(Manzarek) must have dislodged the sound mechanism from some showground carousel to produce his contribution.It's a very different treatment to the upfront, clear and unreverbed sound of the first album's organ.This pretty musicality though, is set-off by excedingly dark lyrics, sung with the utmost gloom.The slide guitaring by Krieger sums up this contradictory sentiment with perfection.I often don't know whether to smile or to fear.Add to this Densmore's odd-ball choice of rhythms, and suddenly the carousel organ doesn't seem so pretty anymore.With the Doors, it's never really darkness by obvious means.They incorporate niceties, then display the perverted relationships that can exist with such things.
'Strange Days', organly chord-grinds its album name-sake onto the scene, true to its word.'You're Lost Little Girl', with an easily detectable bass-line, recieves delicate treatment from Krieger's guitar and Morrison's voice.I find this album's ballads to contain his career's most pleasant singing.'Love Me Two Times' is perhaps the only track which steps outside of this album's induction of emotional confusion.I've always loved the song's well-executed rhythmic interuptions.
Ray 'the Man' zarek, swirls throughout 'Unhappy Girl' like a Dutch organ-grinder with tulips painted on every of the instruments panels.And Krieger has no shame in bending the same note at the end of nearly every single phrase of the song.Semi-playfully, yet eerily aswell.
Next onboard, are broken pianos rollocking on a pirate's ship.A woman ghost,(maybe named Mary Celeste?) wearing a white laced dress flayling in the wind, and shipmates are screaming as the ship goes down, beneath the psychotic waves.Pain.This is 'Horse Latitudes'.(Actually a sea-fearing expression, perhaps likening the sea's power to that of a horse).It can't possibly mean anything.It's merely a dream.No melody to be found, it is a poetry reading atop sound tapestry.'Moonlight Drive' is quite American, but hangs onto the album's vague experimental theme due to excessive guitar-neck slithery, like a hyper-active child insisting on expressing every impulse simultaneously.
'People Are Strange', has arguably Morrison's best, most coherent lyrics.They're even cited in psychology text-books to describe inner symptoms of the global illness which is depression.City life lends itself to feelings of isolation.People are too rushed and enslaved to afford reassuring glances with each other as they're passing by.So, it's easy to feel alone and uncared for.'People Are Strange' is the soundtrack I have playing in my head in such circumstances, just as those confidently strutting down the city street would have 'Stayin Alive' by the Bee Gees as their soundtrack.(Cheesy, I know.But lets face it... if you're STRUTTING, you're already in a cheesy mood anyway).
'My Eyes Have Seen You' rocks itself into the perimeter of passible normalcy.But, bizarre traces just adhere it to this albums rule; The days must remain strange.'I Can't See Your Face In My Mind' introduces a marimba(Central American) with slightly Japanese inclinations.A soft brushing keeps rhythm with this gentille, musical snail.'When The Music's Over' retains the first album's screatchy organ, and the ocean-deep bass-line is well worthy of the song's extenuous length.Its primal creepiness, drags the album home... clawing and screaming!


A carnival of strangeness, loss, and death.   July 15, 1998
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

The Doors' second album continues in the rich, dark vein of their debut. Here, however, the themes are of loss of identity, such as "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind" with its unsettling backward track that lend it an otherworldly feel. Morrison said he wanted their music to evoke a sense of not being at ease, of a traveller who has not quite reached home, and that is truly the feeling here. "You're Lost Little Girl," a mournful ballad, directly asking, "Tell me/Who are you?" Anxiety and apprehension here, people cut off from others--not necessarily common in the late Sixties. "People Are Strange" is one of their most famous songs, with its celebratory tone and embrace of the outsider, the misfit, the freak. Of course the visionary rock poetry of the lead singer is in full effect, particularly in "My Eyes Have Seen You"--"My eyes have seen you/Let them photograph your soul/Memorize your alleys on an endless roll,&qu! ! ot; as well as "Moonlight Drive," with its imagery of water, night, sex, and of course, death--"C'mon baby/Gonna drown tonight/Go down, down." Classic Morrison, exploring the depths. But the piece de resistance is "When the Music's Over," one of their epic dramatic pieces. With its evocative and threatening organ and Robby Krieger's maniacal guitar sounds, it arrives larger than life and twice as convincing. When Morrison screams, "Persian night, babe/See the light, babe/Jesus!/Save us! Jesus!" my head spins, my flesh crawls, my heart pounds. What was he seeing? What was he thinking? (Probably thinking about his next bottle of Wild Turkey, some of you may say! I like to think he was a little less prosaic...) This is a magnificent album, scary and true and timeless.