Upon release, Strange Days reached number three on the US Billboard 200, and eventually earned a platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

[1] Music journalist Stephen Davis considers Strange Days the best Doors album and "one of the great artifacts of the rock movement.

Unlike The Doors, Strange Days incorporates various instruments, ranging from marimba[5] to Moog synthesizer, which has been described as one of the first uses of the synth in rock music history.

[3] On the track "Horse Latitudes", Botnick took the white noise of a tape recorder and varied the speed by hand-winding it (resulting in a sound akin to wind) as the four band members played a variety of instruments in unusual ways.

Two ("My Eyes Have Seen You" and "Moonlight Drive") had been demoed in 1965 at Trans World Pacific Studios before Robby Krieger joined the group; indeed, the latter had been conceived by Morrison prior to his fateful reunion with Manzarek in the summer of 1965.

A conventional blues arrangement, "Moonlight Drive" features a defining slightly off-beat rhythm and Krieger's bottleneck guitar, which create an eerie sound.

[17] The LP's first single, "People Are Strange", was composed in early 1967 after Krieger, drummer John Densmore, and a depressed Morrison had walked to the top of Laurel Canyon.

[18] Although Morrison was the Doors' primary songwriter, Krieger wrote several of the group's hit singles, with his first composition being "Light My Fire".

Upon release, "Love Me Two Times" was considered to be somewhat risqué for radio airplay, and was banned in New Haven, Connecticut, for being "too controversial", much to the dismay of the band.

[26] Actual street performers could not be located for all of the designated roles, so Brodsky's assistant stood in as a juggler while a random cab driver was paid $5 to pose playing the trumpet.

"[34] Gene Youngblood of L.A. Free Press wrote a glowing review, noting the Doors musical style as a "more surreal than psychedelic, it is more anguish than acid.

"[15] Robert Christgau called the album "muscular but misshapen" in a May 1968 column for Esquire, but went on to write that the Doors had come "from nowhere to reign as America's heaviest group".

In 2007, on the occasion of the release of the 40th anniversary edition, Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine, argued that "while The Doors had more frequent, obvious peaks, the quirky Strange Days is a more ambitious, unified work.

There are fewer filler tracks and each song carries as much weight as the one before and after it" and called it "a document of a sometimes beautiful, sometimes scary, and often twisted era of fear and idealism.

[15] The Rolling Stone Album Guide wrote, "With the exceptions of hard blues, 'Love Me Two Times,' and the rock tango, 'Moonlight Drive,' Strange Days didn't have the power of The Doors".

For that reason, the band's second effort isn't as consistently stunning as their debut," but he also expressed that overall "it's a very successful continuation of the themes of their classic album.