AR: L.A. Woman

The Doors - L.A. Woman (1971)

With the upfront caveat that I spent more than a few months of my youth as a Best of the Doors-carrying, seven-mile-snake-worshiping disciple of the quintessential self-important American psychedelic poet-band, and I still believe that some of the best musical moments in rock music can be found in ten second bites amongst the epics on this group's albums... Jim Morrison can be pretty hard to take seriously at times. You know, with the self-exposing, the heavy-drinking, the overblown self-important attitude and lyrics, the self-created mystique and litany of general elements of Behind-the-Music quality that somehow found their way into an Oliver Stone film. Oddly enough, three months before he died (and on what would become the last The Doors album), he, too, failed to take himself seriously and consequently delivered some top notch musical irony. Somewhere in between pomposity and self-parody there's a resonant range, and Morrison et al. nailed it here (for the most part) with a winkless knowing-wink of stripped down blues music. Throw in a few pantheon Doors classics, and you've got a great if imperfect album that plainly entertains. Behind the smoke and symbolism sits, what do you know, good music - good for a laid back dark evening, or most famously, a drive down a California highway.

L.A. Woman is a preposterous album. But it's intentionally preposterous, and this manages to save it and then some. Some of the ridiculousness sits in the intentionally self-referential lyrics - Morrison continues to croon about dark rooms, lizards and snakes. And he covers his self-obsession with a famous chant of his own name in anagram*, "Mr. Mojo Risin'." But the main issue here is one of genre selection - the sprawling masters of the napalm epic have largely dropped their organ hymns for a wealth of simpler forms that don't really ring true with the person singing them (though again, the disconnect between singer and the sung is part of the program). Borderline James Brown soul-organ funk ("The Changeling"), garage band organ pop-rock ("Love Her Madly"), British folk-rock ("Hyacinth House"), and ambient-laced lounge jazz ("Riders on the Storm") all jump from the grooves, none of them seeming quite right but nothing really wrong in any way either. The most worked genre here is lean, straight blues - this is not as "foreign," so to speak, as backbone blues guided a lot of their music over the years (obviously enough on songs like "Roadhouse Blues"). But now the shroud is dropped, and it's just straight ahead twelve bar action, whether in party ("Been Down So Long"), late night slowed down despair ("Cars Hiss By My Window"**) or sinister time ("Crawling King Snake"). And when they're not aptly tackling foreign genres, they're sending up their own - "L'america" and "The Wasp" are classic weird-to-be-weird tracks. The former is a melodramatic apocalypse-fest that falls pretty flat and is easily the weakest thing on the disc; the latter is a blues-based spoken word piece with circus frills that ends up seeming a Frank Zappa homage.

* - Fortunately for us all, the lead singer was not named "Jim S. Morrison," as we'd then have "Mrs. MoJo Risin'!" as a possible theme chant for Beck's froyo cravings. Oh the horror... the horror.

** - Incidentally, if you need proof that these are not sincere renditions, "CHBMW" features at its end a vocal guitar imitation that is just about the dumbest thing this side of Peter Frampton. It's mercifully short, so you really only get out "what the" before the song ends and you think that it had to be a joke, because why the hell else...

For the Nyetian album-rating system, the strengths abound. "The Changeling," a fantastic, punchy energy opener, and the rainy "Riders" closer bookend the album very well. There's a small lag in the aforementioned weakspot "L'america," but it's enough of a departure in style that it at least highlights the surrounding blues strength. The meat of the album is very consistent and has a sort of blues theme and a tongue-in-cheek gestalt that unifies the procedure. It's generically varied so as to keep from ever getting samey, even on repeated listens, and is quality stuff top-to-bottom. And then the disc's all-stars are some of my favorites - the actual centerpiece title track is an all-time rip-it-with-the-top-down classic, featuring an exceptionally well paced slow intro. "Love Her Madly," simple as it is, is fairly pop perfect, and again, the closing "Riders on the Storm" toes the razorline of soothing/engaging. There's just a ton to enjoy about this album - even the laid-back left field, pastoral tones of "Hyacinth House" add to the picture.

Sure, it's not perfect. Jokes about one's own pomposity are still, you know, pompous. And the "ha ha we're still being WEIRD" tracks fall well short of grandfather efforts like, say, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite." That wasn't very fair. :) But this classic '70s career closer lives up to its reputation. I didn't grow up with this one - see the above-referenced Best of compilation if you want the real Nyet-as-teenager experience - but I've come to dig it a ton lately.

Status: Recommended

Nyet's Fave: "Love Her Madly" - largely for sentimental "I can play it on guitar" reasons; the three hits on this disc are pretty neck-and-neck. And neck, I suppose.