Early in 1971 Ray Manzarek, John Desmore and Robbie Kreiger began laying down tracks for the next Doors album while Jim Morrison was vacationing in Paris. <\/p>\n
Little did they realize that Morrison was not coming back. <\/p>\n
Yet in a somewhat odd move, the three remaining Doors decided to stay together and complete this album, as well as another one, before calling it quits. As is expected, Other Voices <\/i>pales in comparison to the studio albums that preceded it, but overall the album as a whole is not as bad as history has labeled it. <\/p>\n
It is interesting that Other Voices <\/i>and the album that followed it, Full Circle, <\/i>are so different. It makes one wonder if many of the songs for Other Voices <\/i>\u00a0were in place before Morrison departed, which makes the overall tenor of the album similar to past Doors material. Full Circle<\/i>, on the other hand, sounds like nothing else in the band’s catalog, likely because Morrison had nothing to do with it, not even as a spectre looming over the words. <\/p>\n
Other Voices <\/i>can be divided into two parts. The first four songs are good and the last four increasingly bad. The LP version was nice as you could play side one without ever turning the record over. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn The Eye Of The Sun\u201d starts the album on a good note. Excellent lyrics, some inventive guitar work from Kreiger and competent vocals from Manzarek come together into the customary Doors sound. \u201cVariety Is The Spice Of Life\u201d is about different women, with a beat different from the usual Doors fare. Robbie Krieger\u2019s vocals are not offensive but have nowhere the depth of Jim Morrison. \u201cShips with Sails\u201d sound like an outtake from L.A. Woman <\/i>and is one of the few times the band sings harmony, while \u201cTightrope Ride\u201d is a Kreiger production and possibly some of the best work of his career. <\/p>\n
So far so good, but we do have to turn the record over, unfortunately. \u201cDown On The Farm\u201d just has poor song construction, \u201cI\u2019m Horny, I\u2019m Stoned\u201d is a poor attempt at humor and features a listless vocal by Kreiger and \u201cWandering Musician\u201d is old Doors style not but not old Doors quality. \u201cHang On To Your Life\u201d concludes the album on a dismal note. <\/p>\n
Other Voices <\/i>would have been a competent debut album by almost any other group. The remaining Doors, however, were not any other group and their previous material had set the bar very high. It may be that what killed Other Voices <\/i>and ultimately the post-Morrison career was not so much the music but the perception — which is ironic, given how the band got its name.<\/p>\n
While Other Voices<\/i> remains a passable attempt by Manzarek, Kreiger and Desmore to keep The Doors legacy alive, it sinks under the weight of expectations and the loss of the person who really made the band what it was. But just because Morrison isn’t here doesn’t mean this should be overlooked, for there is still half an album of good music here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":29036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5647],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-40551","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-doors","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40551"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40551"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}