Morphine 5: The Night

At the risk of sounding crass, the prize for most “rock ‘n roll” death goes to a man who actually died onstage. Morphine was playing a show in Italy, when Mark Sandman collapsed from cardiac arrest mid-song and never recovered. Besides putting an end to his band, it colored the reception of what would be their already-completed album.

At a whopping 50 minutes, The Night is the longest album in their catalog. While based, as ever, around that voices and those saxes, new (for them) instruments are heard throughout the album, more than before. Three songs even have female backup singers.

Lilah, namechecked on Like Swimming, appears to be the muse on the title track, which mixes Sandman’s own piano and Jane Scarpantoni’s cello for a rainy lament. A Tom Waits-style rumba with organ underpins the riveting “So Many Ways”, and piano takes over for “Souvenir”, with less tension and more familiar sounds. They get positively funky (again, for them) on “Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer”, the organ provided by John Medeski. Lilah is pushed aside for one Martha Lee on “Like A Mirror”, which has a great couplet buried under a robotic beat. “A Good Woman Is Hard To Find” fades in, almost as if it were caught mid-performance, and is another contender for a mainstream hit.

“Rope On Fire” has a distinct Mideastern feel, with flavored strings and percussion; it could almost pass for adult contemporary world music, and that’s meant in a good way. The only percussion heard on “I’m Yours, You’re Mine” is a high-hat, unless there’s another beat buried in there somewhere, giving the song a ticking tension that threatens to explode with the organ and synth but doesn’t. Drums are all we hear on “The Way We Met”, which deserves a better backing. “Slow Numbers” is clever, recalling the mood, music and feel of the Rykodisc albums. The effect of somber Celtic fiddles dominates “Take Me With You”, which repeats the title enough to sound like an epitaph. The backing vocals sound tacked on, and that’s a shame.

It’s a bigger shame that The Night is the last Morphine album, and it’s not the first time a band’s promise was cut short. Not all of the tracks sound finished, begging the moot question: Was the released product his vision preserved, or an interpretation thereof?

Morphine The Night (2000)—3

Morphine 4: Like Swimming

Morphine made a big-label jump in time for their next album, but there’s very little on Like Swimming that deviates from their norm. There is, however, variety from track to track, so the listener can’t get too comfortable.

A lovely snippet called “Lilah” opens the album, plowed aside by “Potion”. “I Know You (Pt. III)”, following on from the two on Good, is very much in their comfort zone. That could almost be said for “Early To Bed” and its noir sentiments, except for the keyboard blasts straight off a Prince album. “Wishing Well” is all slide bass and layered sax, and the title track has a nice touch in the way of a fingerpicked acoustic down in the mix. The fuzz comes out on “Murder For The Money”, switching between Velvet Underground grunge and Morphine groove, and from here the music really begins to seesaw.

The most eerily poignant track is “French Fries W/Pepper”, a clever autobiography that predicts where he’ll be in a few years’ time (hopefully drinking red wine and eating the delicacy in the title). “Empty Box” is a mystery involving the mail, but not in a Velvet Underground way. The backing in “Eleven O’Clock” is crazily insistent, and still matching the barest of lyrics, then it’s back down to the usual mood for “Hanging On A Curtain”, with the barest Mellotron cello. With its electronic backing, “Swing It Low” sounds like nothing else on the album; as it turns out, it was taken from a Sandman solo project.

Like Swimming may have been set up to rake in that Spielberg-backed money, but there’s no real standout along the lines of the last two albums. That said, sometimes there’s no shame in preaching to the converted.

Morphine Like Swimming (1997)—3

Morphine 3: Yes

Where Cure For Pain captured the music of late night, Morphine’s third album begins earlier in the evening. Rather than lure the listener in, the first notes on Yes are an insistent sax trill, going right into the dirty groove of “Honey White”. Thanks to the magic of cinema, the song is used perfectly for a five-second scene in Beautiful Girls; don’t do a Google search for it unless you want to go down a wormhole of porn.

It’s a great tune, and possibly their best, and a great way to kick off the album, particularly when followed by the familiar stroll of “Scratch” and “Radar”. A little more late-night, “Whisper” is a direct descendant of the previous album, with a very subtle chromatic descent if its own before and after the sax solo. The title track does a lot with only a few words, and the slide bass comes to the fore on “All Your Way”.

“Super Sex” manages to infuse the Peter Gunn with funk, then the sound reverts to the moodier template. “I Had My Chance”, recorded for a radio show, finds that Cure For Pain groove, and then “The Jury” goes way out over an aimless groove for a metaphoric monologue. A similar, but better beat detour dominates the breaks on “Sharks”, which positively swings the rest of the time. “Free Love” is about as menacing as a band with this lineup can get, used here as a setup for the sole albeit obligatory solo Mark Sandman track, the so-soft-you-might-miss-it “Gone For Good”.

Yes didn’t propel the band to superstardom, but it did lead to major-label interest. Better than all of that, it shows that Cure For Pain didn’t use up all the mojo. They fit nicely on both sides of a Maxell 90—or these days, squeezed onto one CD-R.

Morphine Yes (1995)—4

Morphine 2: Cure For Pain

Everything that made Good so good is taken to the next level on Cure For Pain. The music is tighter and looser as the situations demand, the songs more cinematic and the playing just plain better. And it’s still just sax, drums, slide bass and vocal.

A smoky sax-and-organ piece called “Dawna” creeps out of an alley and back again, and “Buena” sets the basic off-kilter template for the band to follow for the next 35 minutes. “I’m Free Now” sways back and forth as well, through a couple of modulations, before “All Wrong” injects the funk, with a wah-wah sax solo. The years have brought even more songs about a girl named Candy, and Morphine’s is one of the better ones, leading well into the unique “Head With Wings”. But they break from the pattern on “In Spite Of Me”, a gorgeous detour with no sax nor drums, just mandolin, muted guitar and Mark Sandman’s voice through a speaker.

“Thursday” puts us back in familiar territory, gaining power with every break. The title track has all the hallmarks of a radio hit but for the band’s instrumentation and a lyric begging to be misunderstood. The mood continues in order—“Mary Won’t You Call My Name” frenetic and pleading, “Let’s Take A Trip Together” creepy and anti-seductive, “Sheila” just plain wacky. And with perfect pacing, another sad instrumental closes the set. “Miles Davis’ Funeral” is a piece for guitars and percussion, and a fitting title.

Cure For Pain is excellent, but works best at night, on overcast days, or in the middle of a snowstorm. Summertime and sun only get in the way. It’s still one of the best albums of the ‘90s.

Morphine Cure For Pain (1993)—4½

Morphine 1: Good

If you listened to certain radio stations in 1988, you might have heard a smoky blues tune called “I Think She Likes Me” by a band called Treat Her Right. Their self-titled album didn’t catch much fire, and listening it today one can only occasionally hear hints of where singer/songwriter Mark Sandman would end up. Once he developed a style of playing a two-stringed bass with a slide and hooked up with saxophone player Dana Colley, there emerged a sound perfectly described by their moniker: Morphine.

Where Treat Her Right also had two singers, guitars and harmonica, Morphine stripped everything down to bass, sax and drums. Sandman was also the only singer, giving the project a more unified sound, as demonstrated on their first album, Good. Each song sneaks along a groove, simple yet full, and certainly toe-tapping, while the lyrics stay stark and fitting the setting. Even “The Saddest Song” sounds upbeat for music of this level. The raucous voodoo stomp of “You Speak My Language” moves through gibberish into the noir atmosphere of “You Look Like Rain”, the latter a cool stroll worthy of early Tom Waits. Dana Colley even gets an instrumental all to himself.

Good isn’t Morphine’s best album, but it’s a fine start. They would only improve from here.

Morphine Good (1992)—3