Released just six months after L.A Woman, Other Voices supposedly features songs Manzarek had rehearsed with Morrison before the latter’s departure for France. With the band still working on music with Morrison in mind, Other Voices sounds more of a piece with their other work than its successor, Full Circle. On one hand, this makes for better music. Material like the languid “Ships w/ Sails” feels like a continuation of the Doors’ musical development on L.A. Woman, where Full Circle’s flirtations with fusion make it sound like the work of another band altogether. The other side of that, however, is that it’s hard to hear the end of “Tightrope Ride” and not picture Morrison’s voice singing it instead. This problem is much more inherent to Other Voices than Full Circle, making it an album that is hard to enjoy without letting context interfere. It’s especially true given that Manzarek especially delivers melodies in a cadence similar to Morrison’s, even finding graveled yells that echo the form of Morrison’s but lack the same ferocity. If they’d released Other Voices under a different name, chances are the Doors could’ve made this album stand on its own. The music was still there, it’s just too weird of a proposition to have a Doors album without Morrison singing these melodies. Like Full Circle, it’s an album that is an interesting curiosity for completists, but will probably never be able to live on beyond being a strange footnote in classic rock history.