CD REVIEW: THE DOORS – THE SINGLES

Shane | 20 October 2017 | Reply

CD REVIEW: THE DOORS – THE SINGLES
Rhino/Warner
September 2017
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8 ½ /10

Here we are in the 50th anniversary of The Doors’ heyday, and their timeless catalogue is still being repackaged in compilation after compilation, yet almost all of them unfairly ignore the surviving trio’s work after Jim Morrison’s inglorious heroin-soaked death in a Parisienne bathtub.

This double collection of the band’s singles redresses that omission well, also including a few rare B-sides which even ardent fans may have missed along the way.

The big hits – Break On Through, Light My Fire, People Are Strange, Love Me Two Times, Hello I Love You etc – are mostly collected on disc one, with non-album B-sides Who Scared You and Don’t Go No Further breaking up the classics, alongside deeper album cuts such as Unhappy Girl, Moonlight Drive, Easy Ride and Changeling.

Over on disc two things get a little deeper again, with a succession of singles pulled from The Doors’ post-Morrison albums Other Voices and Full Circle, a live version of Roadhouse Blues paired with Albinoni: Adagio from Jim’s posthumous poetry-set-to-music album American Prayer, a couple of tracks from Alive She Cried (including a rough n’ ready version of Them’s Gloria) and a few bonus radio edits of singles.

The post-Morrison work is every bit as musically adept as the more well-known Doors material, and even though Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger’s vocals lack the sonorous charisma and dangerous charm of their former bandmate, and the lyrics tend towards the new age rather than Morrison’s more shamanesque style, Tightrope Ride, Ships w/ Sails, Get Up And Dance and the irresistibly quirky The Mosquito are all worthy of admission.

This is a more holistic picture of The Doors than many will have known, and shows another, grittier, bluesier side to their power and presence, proving that it is no wonder that The Doors – like The Beatles, The Cure and precious few others – are a ‘rite of passage’ band for each successive generation of searching teens.