The Doors started their career with an overabundance of riches. Strange Days followed their self-titled debut later in 1967, and was made up of a bunch of stuff that hadn’t made it onto its predecessor. While “Love Me Two Times” and “People Are Strange” are two of the lesser tracks you’d find on any Doors singles compilation, Strange Days is packed with album cuts that are stunning. This is where they committed to a more psychedelic sound in a more thorough and sustained way than at any other point. Tracks like “Strange Days,” “Unhappy Girl,” and “Moonlight Drive” are lush, but that lushness — like the synthesizers in the title track or Krieger’s slide work on “Moonlight Drive” — is ever so off-kilter, a little sea-sick. It sounds like some kind of underwater nightclub. But even as Strange Days is loaded with great textures, it’s also a punchy and efficient album; aside from the titan closer “When The Music’s Over,” no song on the album reached the three and a half minute mark. Overall, it’s also their least bluesy album (though it may be equal with Waiting For The Sun in that regard). The Doors perfect their brand of psychedelic pop, a brand that has their trademark muscularity but trades in relentless hooks rather than the blues sprawl of some of their later work. That’s the case for “Moonlight Drive,” but also for a hidden gem like “My Eyes Have Seen You,” where Morrison delivers the infectious chorus in that awesomely ragged yell he could just leap right into. The Doors came out swinging with the self-titled and Strange Days back to back, and while this wound up being a semi-outlier in their catalogue, it deserves its reputation as one of the finest documents of ’60s rock.