Run, do not walk—nay, teleport yourself—to the nearest record store and take this record home with you, 'cause the Doors can still do it and we all ought to be glad and I hope it shuts up the bad-rappers for good and all.

The Soft Parade: none of it is bad; most of it is very superior music and some of it is absolutely glorious. (p. 40)

[The] real beauty of The Soft Parade (album) lies in Shaman's Blues and The Soft Parade (song)—and, to a lesser extent, Runnin' Blue. None of these songs sounds like anything the Doors have done before: they are all technically sophisticated, well-balanced, and definitely positive in statement, and I hope like hell that they are indicative of the new direction the Doors appear to be taking: because if that is the case, gonna be a lot of doomsayers standin' round with their faces hanging out, and that would please me mightily. On that hypothesis, I will proceed.

Shaman's Blues, then, is a Morrison-composed, scatty-sounding amalgam of jazz and blues…. There's some obscure recitative at the end: all in all, a surprisingly beautiful song and to my mind one of the Doors' very best….

The song [The Soft Parade] is built on tidal shifts of music and kinetics, declamatory poem trips: sections strung together like contrasting beads of melody and surreality. (p. 41)

Patricia Kennely, "Record Reviews: 'The Soft Parade'," in Jazz & Pop (© 1969 by Jazz Press Inc.; reprinted by permission of the author), Vol. 8, No. 10, October, 1969, pp. 40-1.

[Jim Morrison] gambols through indulgent "Bitter grazing in sick pastures" [in The Lords and the New Creatures]. His characteristic fascination with incest, decay, death and dismemberment is all there; man retreats from reality into image, religion, alchemy, cinema…. Provoking protest, subtle as a grenade, Morrison is equally sure of violent dislike or allegiance. When he's good, he can transform even the unrecognizable into the commonplace.

"Non-Fiction: 'The Lords and the New Creatures'," in Kirkus Reviews (copyright © 1970 The Kirkus Service, Inc.), Vol. XXXVIII, No. 5, March 1, 1970, p. 304.