Album of the Day

THE DOORS was one of the defining albums of 1967, though in the hands of Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, the Summer of Love became a funeral pyre – their debut collection veered closer to urban dread than to utopia. There's desperation and menace in songs like “Soul Kitchen,” “Take It As It Comes” and “The End,” and while that's balanced by the exhilaration of “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” and “Light My Fire,” the thrills, as often as not, come from peering over the edge. The vision of THE DOORS was clear from the day of its release; several decades and millions of sales later, the album's primal power remains undiminished.