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The Doors - Waiting for the Sun
- After the stylistic flourishes--and excesses-–of the band's first two seminal albums, the Doors' third record, "Waiting for the Sun" is almost jarring with its straightforward sound. While the eponymous debut album and "Strange Days" delighted in strange soundscapes that lyrically, musically and philosophically defied the reigning hippie mentality of the era, "Sun" is more akin to the Byrds than America's leading experimental blues-rock band.
"Hello, I Love You" and "Love Street" set the tone for most of the album, lingering on love and romance rather than frontman/lyricist Jim Morrison's typical tropes including drugs, mythology, violent angst or some combination thereof. Though a few of Morrison's lyrics take typical jabs at lust and the fickleness of the heart, the arrangements for both tunes sound like crosses between The Kinks and Eric Burdon and the Animals, demonstrating how different "Sun" is from other Doors' work. The unremarkable "My Wild Love" and the imaginative "Summer's Almost Gone" reinforce this trait.
The third track, "Not to Touch the Earth," though, finds the band in full experimental form. Musically and lyrically, "Earth" is a wild ride through a bizarre landscape filled with dangers both physical and spiritual. The song is outfitted with a stomping beat, loping guitar-work and wild keyboard playing from organist Ray Manzarek, giving the song an atmosphere that is both haunting and daunting. It might be the strongest song the band ever wrote.
"Earth" was one section of a seven-part saga written by Morrison called "Celebration of the Lizard." The Doors attempted to record the nearly 20-minute tune for inclusion on "Sun" but only completed "Earth" to their satisfaction. Had it been completed, "Celebration" probably would have served the same purpose as "The End" on "The Doors" or "When the Music’s Over" on “Strange Days”: an epic-length song to end the album on a hypnotic, jarring note.
Instead, the remaining songs on "Sun" tend to dwell on two subjects: love and war. "Wintertime Love" and "We Could Be So Good Together" uses fantastical imagery to discuss both the pure and unseemly sides of love, while "The Unknown Soldier" and "Five to One" rely on similar creativity--more darkly applied--in offering a vivid anti-war protest and a call to revolt, respectively. "One," with its hard-hitting instrumentation and chanting, is especially memorable, casting aside peace and love in favor of The Doors' "We want the world and we want it now" sentiment they announced on the prior record's "When the Music’s Over."
Though "Waiting for the Sun" certainly represents a departure for the Doors stylistically, the album's conventional sound does not threaten the band's songwriting nearly as much as the two conventional songs opening the record would suggest. "Not to Touch the Earth" and "The Unknown Soldier" are both as dark as any of the band's other material, while songs like the flamenco-flavored "Spanish Caravan" find the band experimenting with new styles. So, "Sun" does not represent The Doors abandoning their core aesthetic-–they were expanding it for the future.
Reviewer: Adam Rowan
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Reviewer's Rating: 8
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Added: 26-Jul-2009
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