Cure For Pain
Morphine
Rykodisc,
1994
Reviewed by
Greg Perez
Mark Sandman is missed.
The singer/bassist/soul behind Boston's Morphine left a trail of ash and smoke with his
band's smoldering catalogue of "low rock." Over four albums and various b-sides
and singles, Morphine took jazz and blues conventions and sheared them down to the
visceral core, sculpting their own universe of brooding rock beauty.
Listening now to 1994's Cure For Pain is doubly depressing since Sandman was
struck down by a heart attack on stage several months ago in Italy. It's a testament to
the band's ability to wring the most melancholy from the sparest of tools. Morphine drove
their mostly guitarless style into the deepest of regrets and the most jazzed up of
barroom poetry and made it all catchy. Riding on the back of Sandman's two-string slide
bass and Dana Colley's creative sax work, Morphine's sound is unmistakable. Anyone who
says the back-room chug of "Thursday" could use a guitar or two is simply
listening with the wrong ears. And when was the last time you heard a sax plugged into a
wah-wah pedal sound so damn cool?
But Cure For Pain is also a stained-glass sketch of bleary desire and intensity,
full of sideways glances awash in vulnerability. It's the sound of Sandman getting his
teeth knocked out by life and stumbling back up for another drink at the bar. "I got
guilt, I got fear, I got regret," he laments on "I'm Free Now." "I'm
just a panic-stricken waste. I'm such a jerk."
Always more lover than fighter, the moodiness that oozes out of Cure For Pain is
drawn mostly from Sandman's slow-burning passion for the women he writes about. The
mournful "Candy" and mandolin twinkle of "In Spite Of Me" spill the
kind of unrequited emotions that make cold, rainy nights alone something to fear, yet
somehow something to savor, too. That was the genius of Morphine.
|
|
"Cure For
Pain is a stained-glass sketch of bleary desire and intensity, full of sideways
glances awash in vulnerability."
Greg Perez
- NATN Design God
Related Links
Morphine Homepage
|
