This is one of those rare works where both the music and the lyrics stay powerful from the first track to the last. We hear several wonderful pieces familiar to the casual Doors listener like "Love Me Two Times," and "Moonlight Drive."

But the rest of the album isn't just filler. This is one tight and clear selection of tunes that all had potential to be hits. "Horse Latitudes" is a brief but chilling narration by Jim Morrison, and "My Eyes Have Seen You" is --in my opinion-- the most overlooked songs in the Doors repetoire. This song has a surreal flowing beat and dreamy lyrics that gives that personifies that psychedelic flavor that The Doors are known for.

Many feel the songs on "Strange Days" are some of The Doors' darkest imagery. I can understand why they feel that way; but there is such a gentle flow to the music that I actually find soothing, with "Horse Latitudes" being the only pure haunting Guajardian piece on the album. This album is surreal in parts and sweet in others. This CD is one of the most complete albums I have ever heard.


Faces Come Out Of The Rain When You're Strange   February 26, 2006
El Lagarto (Ambler, PA)
16 out of 16 found this review helpful

Probably the best Doors CD available, remarkably fresh considering it was recorded nearly 40 years ago. Following up their debut album, Strange Days is moody, atmospheric, dark, and very well crafted. Morrison, vocals, and Manzarek, keyboards are really in synch here. The singing is wonderfully unpredictable, Morrison never seems to know what he'll do next. The lyrics are intentionally off base, sometimes bizarre, and the keyboards keep the groove together while the narrative twists and turns. Particularly welcome is the guitar playing of Robby Krieger, laying down that trademark, spacey, West coast sound - you can almost see the plumes of incense. Densmore is not a flashy drummer, but he's right where he needs to be, this is not stadium rock, it's actually closer to chamber music in sensibility. There are those who will not connect with Horse Latitudes, to them we simply say, at the time it was considered hip to mix poetry and music into a froth. For the rest, nothing but winners. The title track belongs in any best of the Doors grouping as do the spooky You're Lost Little Girl and the anthemic People Are Strange. Love Me Two Times definitely kicks, right there beside My Eyes Have Seen You. So many of these tracks build wonderfully, like Moonlight Drive which starts dreamy and ends with Morrison screaming in sinewy seduction. Of the closer what could possibly be said except, When The Review's Over, Turn Off The Lights, Turn Off The Lights.


Timeless Music.   June 7, 2002
Mr. Fellini (El Paso, Texas United States)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

"Strange Days" is one of the great rock albums of all time. It is The Doors' second best album and fittingly, it was released right after their greatest LP of all time, their debut effort "The Doors." It features some of the band's most timeless music and a few of their most popular songs. If "The Doors" contained the exhilarating fever and emotion of the band as seen in songs like "Break On Through" and "Light My Fire," then "Strange Days" is a trip down the darker realms of poetry and melody that have made the band so enduring to this day. The opening song, "Strange Days," is visceral, hypnotic and contains some of Jim Morrison's darkest, strangest and disturbing lyrics and vocals. The echo effect and Ray Manzarek's organ give the song an atmospheric quality that makes this one of the band's all-time greatest tracks. This is also the record that contains "Moonlight Drive," the song Manzarek says Morrison first sang to him on a California beach and convinced him of their musical possibilities. It is a dreamy tune, with wonderful, poetic lyrics and Robby Krieger playing some of his trademark slide guitar. One of the gems here is undeniably "People Are Strange," it is one of The Doors' most popular songs and surely one of their best. It is wonderfully melodic and alluring and perfectly sets the mood for what it is about. Today, even more than in the 60s, it perfectly captures the feeling of isolation and loneliness. Recently Goth bands like Nosferatu and more alternative artists like Stina Nordenstam have recorded this song, but it is never more captivating or even disturbing than when Morrison is singing it. Another classic here is "Love Me Two Times." It is one of the band's best blues songs and one of their funnest jams with some of Robby Krieger's best lyrics and inventive guitar playing. Aerosmith has done a roaring cover but this is THE version of course. The masterpiece though, is "When The Music's Over." This song is a true rock epic, it expanded The Doors' experimentation with extended tracks as they did with "The End" and is just as captivating as that other classic. "When The Music's Over" is visceral and Morrison really comes off here in his poet, prophet, genius persona. Here we find the immortal yell: "We want the world and we want it...NOW!" "Strange Days" is an example of truly timeless modern music, it shows why The Doors transcend cultures and generations. It embodies why this band remains one of the most influential bands in not just rock but popular culture as a whole as well. It contains the melodies that have sprouted current movements like the Goth Rock groups and Industrial bands. Jim Morrison never lived to see the impact he left on rock music for all time, but he left us songs that are truly classical in that they will endure and keep touching people. Here is one of the masterpieces of theatric, artistic and visceral music.


I am not a Doors fan, I am a critic   May 31, 2001
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

October 1967: The Doors' second album is released.

The first release by the Doors, their self-titled album that contained the increasingly famous "Light my Fire" and the increasingly infamous "The End", had become a bestseller in the few months that passed between the date it was issued and the date the second album, STRANGE DAYS, was first seen in record stores. However, it was a fine distance that existed between the songwriting quality and production on the first release and the quality and production on the second release. The band would never put forth an album like STRANGE DAYS again in their career; filled with ear-catching soundscapes, bizarre melodies, and complex arrangements, not one track on the 35-minute work is a waste of time.

The incredible set of songs present here include the piece-du-resistance, another 11-minute masterpiece entitled "When the Music's Over". While not as gripping as the previous lengthy centerpiece featured on the first work, "Music" is by far more entertaining, reaching climax after climax and driven by a persistant bassline, bluesy guitar, and the usually interesting Morrison-penned lyrics. Unlike "The End", I was able to listen to the entire composition without having to look at the timer on my stereo once. The shorter, more concise demonstrations of brilliance featured alongside the aforementioned work include the catchy, incredible "Love me Two Times", with lyrics by Robbie Kreiger that are forgivable because he's obviously TRYING to emulate classic blues verses. My personal favorite Doors song is the eerie, shimmeringly beautiful "You're Lost Little Girl", which may be the only tune by the group that features a pretty melody. The memorable "Moonlight Drive" is arranged here to the nth degree, but that makes the piece even more effective as the designated "party" song. The two throwaways "My Eyes have Seen You" and "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind" are actually better than the more-cabaret-than-Alabama-Song-but-still-more-convincing-mega-hit "People Are Strange", the latter for being an maddeningly psychedelic, enticing ballad, and the former for being the scariest (and probably most powerful) thing on the entire album. The introductory "Strange Days" lives up to its title, and is an ominous display of the new studio techniques the Doors would heavily employ throughout the record, and "Unhappy Girl" is the absolute pinnacle of entertainingly over-produced excercises. (By the way, they're both stellar tracks). Understandably, the worst track is "Horse Latitudes", but the Residents-esque "music" behind Jim's poetic readings succeeds in creating a grim effect, and daring, dramatic excursions like this are what made Jim Morrison famous--are they not?

All in all, this is by far the best Doors album; it is reccomended you purchase the first record before this, but don't expect to be truly blown away until you put on your headphones to enter the musical carnival of "Strange Days".


"Strange Days" - better than "The Doors"?, it's a tossup   December 22, 2004
rash67 (USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

2006 update
Elektra has re-released all the Doors CD. They uploaded the master tapes to 24 bit/96khz (nearly SACD quality) and then remapped it back to regular CD format (16bit/44khz). The result is much more dynamic and accurate. If your copy doesn't say 24bit, throw it out and get the new ones. The biggest sonic improvement since the creation of the CD!

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Rivals their self-titled album, "Strange Days" is one of the best Rock Albums of all time.

I remember it was if it were yesterday, Merriwether Post Pavilion summer, 1968. The rest of the Doors were on stage, tuning up, Morrison was more than a half hour late. The impatient audience stomped feet and chanted. Suddenly Morrison at the back, in leather pants and snakeskin boots, no shirt, ran down the thousand steps, reached the stage and fell flat on his face. He moaned. he moaned more. Band played "da da da da da Dah". A girl yelled "why doesn't someone help him??? Manzarek put a mike near him so we could hear the moans louder. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhh" Suddenly he shot up ten feet in the air. "AHH I'm a Back Door Man!" and the Doors launched into the Willie Dixon blues classic.

In '68 we thought Strange Days was their best. But the Doors got little airplay and were NOT Rock Gods in their time. Less popular than, say, "Canned Heat" or "Quicksilver Messenger Service"! Morrison and his dark Romantic, Wagernian Love-Death songs, like a 60's Baudelaire.

This CD contains their ultimate Love-Death statement, "Moonlight Drive" which Morrison penned before there was The Doors. "Come on, Baby, gonna drown tonight! Goin' down, down". The Music Concert "Horse Latitudes" which is about Spanish Conquestadors coming to America in ships and the captains ejecting horses when the ship gets becalmed. He wrote this for English class as a junior at George Washington HS, Alexandria, VA!

In "Lost Little Girl", Densmore and Mazarek laid down the drum and bass track, then played them back backwards before adding the vocal and guitar. "Love Me Two Times" may be their best boogie Blues song. Morrison loved the Blues and wrote more as time went on. "When the Music is Over" is a performance piece, not unlike "The End" but with ecology as the theme instead of Oedipus Rex. In '68, amid riots, LBJ and the VietNam war, we found "We want the World and we want it NOW" quite an appealing idea! Nixon hated him, put him on the Enemies List, made sure he was prosecuted. Depending on the story you believe, Morrison may well have killed himself with drugs or alcohol rather than go to prision on the trumped-up public indecency charges, after fighting the Nixon dominated courts for two years. And sometimes "People are Strange"! The sinister paranoia of "Looking at the city under Television Skies".

The musicianship, the precision from the whole group, the cohesion, is rarely found on any album before or since.

Let's clear up some nonsense, Morrison had some bad habits. He drank. He was a dark visionary, a poet, a shaman and a showman with a great sense of theater. He was not a satanist. He was lived a life more like Lord Byron than Anton Levay. I'm sure he would find the rumours of satanism quite amusing, were he still with us.

And when asked in Crawdaddy magazine, he said his "favorite singer was Frank Sinatra". We thought it was a put-on. It wasn't. Listen carefully to his singing register and phrasing.

I have to add that I was a music critic for my college newspaper. I listened to a lot of junk, but this album and "Buffalo Springfield Again", received my highest rating a long time ago. Both are still all-time classics, and both have a special place in my heart.