The soundtrack to Tom DiCillo’s
Doors documentary When You’re Strange does an admirable job of aping the L.A. quartet’s hazy pomp and poetry, intercutting interviews and recitations by Johnny Depp with live tracks, assorted rarities featured in the film, and a few enduring classics. Apart from Depp’s readings of
Jim Morrison’s poetry, there is nothing previously unreleased here, nor is it necessarily of much use to the collector who will have the handful of oddities elsewhere, but as an aural companion to the film it works quite well, creating its own hazy, impressionistic journey through the group’s oft-told past. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine