Albums by this artist

Cure For Pain (1994)

Morphine

Cure For Pain

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» GREG PEREZ | NATN ART DIRECTOR

Morphine Cure For Pain Rykodisc, 1994 RiYL: Ben Folds Five, The Replacements, Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet

Mark Sandman, 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 in Italy in 1999. 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."

Sandman was always more lover than fighter, and the moodiness that oozes out of Cure For Pain is drawn mostly from his 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.

GREG PEREZ | Those that know this man -- as friend, NATN designer and/or Asian Millionaire -- love him. You can check out his site or email him and give him thoughts on our site's design.