Los Angeles arrives as a woman you can enter and never finish meeting. The speaker has been in town an hour, already sorting lucky ladies from lost angels, Hollywood bungalows from the city of night. She is suburbs melting into blues, freeways and midnight alleys, cops and topless bars—a figure so alone the song has to keep saying it. Motel money murder madness flattens the glamour into one hard inventory, and the mood tips from glad to sadness without leaving the road.

What keeps the portrait from settling into postcard noir is the long blues machine underneath: a body-held groove that rides more than it resolves, turning desire and dread into the same forward pull. When _Mr. Mojo Risin’_ takes over—Jim Morrison’s name scrambled into a chant of rising and riding—the city and the singer fuse. L.A. woman is lover, landscape, and the charge that keeps him moving through her until the band finally lets go.