Morphine - The Story of a "Baritone Experience"

"Thank you, Palestrina. It's a beautiful evening, it's great to be here, and I want to dedicate a super-sexy song to you." These are the words Mark Sandman spoke before dying, on July 3, 1999, to the crowd at the "Nel nome del rock" festival. At 47, the leader of Morphine passed away like this, bass in hand, before the horrified eyes of the thousands who had gathered in Palestrina (Rome) to see one of the cult bands of the Nineties. A heart attack killed, right there on stage, the man who had devised an original and unmistakable sound, poised between rock, blues and jazz. A "baritone experience," as Sandman himself had called it, due to the register of both his voice and his entire instrumental setup. But let's start from the beginning...

In the early Nineties, Mark Sandman earned a certain reputation on Boston's underground circuit. He dropped out of college and made a living as a cab driver and working on fishing boats, all while pursuing a daring experiment: playing rock in a band with no guitar, the instrument usually at its core. The group was called Treat Her Right, and it produced a stripped-down blues-rock, drained of its emotional charge yet arranged in an almost cocktail-lounge style. The band released three albums ("Treat Her Right", "Tied To The Tracks" and "What's Good For You") that went largely unnoticed, but they deeply shaped Sandman's musical background, which also included a brief stint in Chris Ballew's Supergroup (Ballew would later join The Presidents of the United States of America).

Inspired by certain African single-string instruments, Sandman came to believe that a single string could contain all the notes within itself. He therefore decided to try playing a fretless bass with just two strings, keeping only the low E and A, to be plucked or coaxed with a slide. This was the prelude to the birth of Morphine, formed in Boston in 1992. One of the most original groups of the Nineties, Morphine developed a musical vision that was revolutionary for the rock of that era: combining clearly jazz-inflected instrumentation with a thoroughly distinctive compositional approach, drawing on blues as much as rockabilly, swing as much as singer-songwriter tradition, jazz as much as new wave.

A trio lineup with no guitar, Morphine are one of the boldest bands in the whole history of rock, at least in terms of instrumentation: drums by Jerome Deupree (later replaced by Billy Conway in '93), baritone sax by Dana Colley, and two-string bass by singer Mark Sandman, an introverted crooner with a warm, enveloping tone. The sound that emerges from this trio is deeply dark and rarefied, steeped in noir atmospheres and built entirely on the interplay of sax and bass, which converse beautifully over Deupree's inventive rhythms. Colley is a saxophonist of extraordinary lyricism: his instrument is a spectral, smoky voice, rich with pathos, capable of plunging into bottomless lows before soaring into almost bodiless phrases, always concise and measured. Sandman, meanwhile, was simply one of the most important figures of the decade: a singer with a highly personal style, a musician of refined sensibility, and a cultured, inspired songwriter (a worthy heir to masters Nick Cave and Tom Waits), Sandman forged a style of songwriting that has little or nothing to do with the rock of that era. His compositions are astonishing: seemingly simple and straightforward, they actually metabolize decades of past music to shape something new, intricate, and surprisingly modern.

The minimal arrangements, meanwhile, lend the songs fresh, precious nuances, oscillating between retro shades and hints of the avant-garde, between a revival of sounds belonging to another era mysteriously made contemporary again (Miles Davis-style cool jazz, Delta blues, 1950s rock'n'roll, nightclub piano-bar lounge) and an extreme inclination toward stretching out space, highlighting the gaps, composing by subtraction, almost placing emphasis on what is "missing". The trio's music is stretched out, comatose, yet at the same time lively, since the constant interplay of bass and sax (on which the whole harmony rests) and the propulsive drive of the drums keep things moving. The dynamics are calibrated to the millimetre to strike the right balance between metaphysical stasis and physicality, often sacrificing improvisation and organizing the musical fabric into almost mechanical scores.

Morphine's full-length debut, Good (1992), is a landmark, the first (and best) chapter of a truly spectacular trilogy of albums. A melancholy existentialism hangs over the album's songs, blurred snapshots of a present that has never felt so desolate, in which the individual loses himself in a solitary, none-too-sober contemplation of half-empty glasses at a bar counter. Nostalgia, mystery and anguish pile up in these glimpses of urban loneliness, dazzling fragments of pure metropolitan poetry. "Good", the opening track, is almost the blueprint for Morphine's musical poetics: a bass riff emerges from silence, opening up a narcotic spiral of drums joined by the sax, which slightly varies the bass line; Sandman's deep voice then enters, stammering out an erotic delirium, while the percussion grows more intense and the sax turns sharper, creating zones of harsh drama. Blues structure, jazz phrasing and an almost post-punk tribalism converge and blend miraculously here. It's a modern, dark-tinged form of blues, as much a child of Robert Johnson as of the pained mechanics of Joy Division.

"Claire" (another high point of the album) follows the archetype of the title track, opening with the theme stated in unison by bass and sax before setting the chorus to frenetic sixteenth-note descents, and even placing at the song's close an oasis of disorienting delicacy with melancholy saxophone filigree. "The Saddest Song" conceals within it a traditional ballad form, which the arrangement nonetheless transfigures to the point of near unrecognizability: the real protagonists are the plastic bass and Sandman's heartfelt vocal, while Colley is left to underscore these moods with impalpable embroidery; the drums, meanwhile, are syncopated and insistent, yet the whole composition seems motionless, immersed in a rarefied, supernatural atmosphere. Denser and more anxious is "Do Not Go Quietly Under Your Grave", a phenomenal shuffle in which Sandman lays out his own philosophy of life over an instrumental bed that dazzles with its essentiality and lyricism.

Meanwhile, the brilliant instrumental interplay of "On The Other Side" only heightens one of the album's most memorable melodies, crafting a gem of inestimable worth: the voice rings out dreamlike and dark, the almost mantra-like cadence of the rhythm section fuses the most sinister Cave with swing syncopations, while the sax (echoing Albert Ayler) carves out a raw, dissonant solo space. All the tension built up in the verses dissolves in the chorus, where bass and sax construct one of the album's most bewitching passages: a descending scale steeped in Eastern echoes that spirals around Sandman's metaphysical vocal. "I Know You" is downright impalpable, almost bodiless in its narcoleptic unfolding, pure abstraction; a moderate Native American-style tribalism instead fuels "Have A Lucky Day", a paradoxical account of a gambler's day. The wilder side of the Morphine sound is sublimated by the percussive frenzy of the swinging "You Speak My Language" and by the driving "Test-tube Baby/Shoot'em Down", a railroad blues worthy of Gun Club but performed with the skill of sophisticated jazz musicians, while "You Look Like Rain" and "The Only One" are steeped in the thickest noir atmosphere, complete with languid sax and Sandman playing the most introverted Tom Waits.

With Good, Morphine prove themselves masters at carving out nocturnal, rarefied atmospheres, drawing on an utterly original compositional technique and a three-piece lineup among the tightest and most eccentric ever seen.

Cure For Pain (1993) shows a greater attention to song form and is a more accessible work than its predecessor. More polished and refined, built on an at-times excessive formalism, the album deepens the study of arrangement by enriching the instrumentation (here and there an almost imperceptible acoustic guitar, cocktail-lounge percussion, an organ and a mandolin appear) and thinning out the thick fog that seemed to smother the debut, often opting for tones and lighting that are equally pale but more perceptible. The more contained evanescence of the sonic textures is matched by equally compact songwriting, bolstered by episodes that are nothing short of thrilling. It ranges from the energetic, syncopated blues of "Buena" to the slender melody of the veiled "I'm Free Now", from the moving lament of "Candy" to the muttering sax and swamp-like beats of "Head With Wings", from the airy elegy of "Cure For Pain" to the deafening industrial boogie of "Thursday", almost like a Pere Ubu song performed by the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. Set apart are the pastoral folk of "In Spite Of Me" and the two short instrumentals that open and close the album, barely sketched experiments that lack development and are therefore essentially incomplete: "Dawna" is ethereal, almost new age, built on a single sax solo and a thread of organ, while "Miles Davis' Funeral" is a tenuous embroidery of acoustic guitar, percussion and slide, unwinding in a slow, hypnotic nocturnal procession.

Colley is without doubt the true star of the record: his instrument ranges across every front (fills, load-bearing structures, solos) while always remaining effective and evocative, in perfect alchemy with Deupree's bass and drums. Sandman, meanwhile, was establishing himself as one of the most refined and consistent songwriters of the era, as well as a singer gifted with a baritone voice that was more penetrating and spartan than ever.

A fixture on college radio playlists, Cure For Pain was hailed by "Rolling Stone" magazine as the biggest underground success of 1994, selling over 300,000 copies.

The third album, Yes (1995), marks a decisive change of direction for the band: sacrificing the noir, depressive side of their sound, Morphine (now with Bill Conway in place of Deupree) push its explosive physicality to the extreme, veering toward driving, rhythmic songs that reconnect, in spirit, with 1950s rhythm'n'blues and rock'n'roll, even as every such reference is twisted and absorbed into the band's own distinctive musical vision. The performances are tense, impetuous, teeming with an aggression that had previously been held back, concealed beneath a dense blanket of soporific existentialism. Emblematic of this are the frantic "Honey White" which, placed at the album's opening, rushes by fast and tight amid the sax's bebop virtuosity and drums pounded at full throttle, or the morbid funk of "Super Sex", in which Sandman's sung/spoken vocal is as vicious and degraded as it's ever been. It's the frontman himself who unleashes a vocal style never so malevolent and desperately sensual, fitting for underscoring the dark hues of the masterpiece "Whisper" (plastic, full-bodied bass, syncopated drums, piano in the background, sax delivering thrilling solos) or of the moribund "I Had My Chance" (vibrant with the darkest, most primitive blues). Sandman's compositional talent is perhaps at its peak: the sunny "All Your Way" dazzles with melodies that are simple yet refined, while the harmonic complexities of "Yes" have few equals even in the most sophisticated jazz.

Yes, however, is also and above all the album in which the band's anger and paranoia become more tangible, giving rise to some of the most startling experiments in their entire output: "The Jury" is a dreamlike spoken piece over a hazy, unsettling sonic bed from which languid atonal sax phrases and bass smears occasionally surface (and where Sandman gets to show off his exceptional storytelling gifts); "Free Love" (funereal neurosis complete with distorted bass, icy sax and filtered vocal) sounds like Ornette Coleman tackling a Black Sabbath song (!), while the masterpiece "Sharks" alternates spoken passages in total silence with outright sonic eruptions in the name of a swinging hard rock that evokes both Ten Years After and Archie Shepp. Even the episodes more closely tied to the typical Morphine sound (the obsessive blues of "Radar" and the hushed "Scratch") vibrate with a sinister tension of which there's no trace amid the catatonic atmospheres of the previous albums.

Overall, Yes is a surprisingly alive, pulsing record, confirming Morphine as one of the most creative and gifted ensembles of our time.

Like Swimming (1997), on the other hand, is a disappointment. Sandman is frighteningly short of ideas, and on most of the tracks he does little more than recycle all the stereotypes of the band's sound in a confused, inconclusive attempt to resurrect past glories. Although the performances are as superb as ever (these are, after all, incredible musicians), the record lacks songwriting, is patchy, often insubstantial (tracks like "Wishing Well" or "French Fries" are empty exercises in style that, on top of everything, lack feeling). The only songs worth remembering are the more solid and lively ones, like the bluesy "Early To Bed" or the hypnotic "Murder For The Money".

The saga of Morphine and their "baritone experience" came to a definitive close in 1999, with the tragic events at Palestrina. "Don't stop everything, Mark lived for music, he died with music," the band's saxophonist, Dana Colley, told festival organizers the day after the tragedy. And this seems to be the spirit that led the surviving members of Morphine to release The Night, an album recorded just days before Sandman's death. A record in which, as the liner notes put it, Sandman had wanted to "expand" the typical Morphine sound with richer arrangements, adding parts for piano, organ, exotic instruments and female choirs. The mood of the record is the dark, aching one typical of Morphine. A spleen that, however, doesn't smack of adolescent depression, but of an attraction to the darker, and at the same time more romantic, side of life. Something poised between the smokiest jazz, the old Depression-era blues of the down-and-out, and the chansonnier Tom Waits of the Nineties.

In Sandman's own intentions, the album was meant to mark the beginning of a new chapter for the Boston band (sadly, we'll never know). It's nonetheless undeniable that on this record Morphine veer decisively toward even more introspective, nocturnal music, with fuller arrangements and greater instrumental variety (horns, cello, organ, pianos and a choir all make an appearance). The title track ranks among their great masterpieces: driven by the graceful laments of a cello and the urgent rhythms of the drums, the song spins dizzyingly in on itself in a riot of romantic sax solos and desperate vocals, bringing together, in spirit, the existentialism of Leonard Cohen and the voodoo obsessions of Gun Club.

The heartfelt prayers "Rope On Fire" and "Take Me With You" appropriate the traditional music of different peoples (Middle Eastern psalms for the former, Protestant gospel for the latter), to express the same religious anxiety, the same mystical torment gripping Sandman in this final phase of his life. The piano sonata "Souvenir" and the hushed digression of "Like A Mirror" (a murmured whisper over a muted percussive bed) reveal the extreme fragility of a work that often adopts the tone of confession and psalm to inspire feelings of repentance and redemption.

Unknowingly (or perhaps not, who can say) Sandman, with his extreme humility and dazzling talent, composed with The Night his own funeral oration, raising one last and even more solemn cry to that sense of cosmic abandonment that marked the entire musical journey of Morphine. The surviving members decided to carry on as "Orchestra Morphine" to keep "chasing that sound that's been damning us since we were born", as their leader used to say.

After the Orchestra Morphine experience, Dana Colley and Bill Conway recruited singer Laurie Sargent, giving birth to Twinemen. The project is, from its very name, a tribute to their late friend ("Twinemen" is a comic book series created by Sandman) and carries on his stylistic legacy. The self-titled debut, released in 2002 on Hi-N-Dry, is honest in not trying at all costs to shake off such a cumbersome legacy. Twinemen offers well-crafted songs played with great technical skill, more oriented toward rediscovering "roots" music, but lacking Sandman's brilliant flashes of genius. The following Sideshow (2004) and Twinetime (2007) follow the same path.

Even more faithful to the "Morphine spirit" is Dana Colley's other project, A.K.A.C.O.D., in which the saxophonist is joined by Monique Ortiz, a singer with a dark, shadowy timbre as well as a bassist with distinctly Sandman-esque moves, and drummer Larry Dersch. The band debuted in 2008 with the successful Happiness.

Sandman's memory is honored with a foundation named after him (the Mark Sandman Music Education Fund) and, on record, with the box set Sandbox: Mark Sandman Original Music (Hi-N-Dry, 2004), which collects unreleased material scattered across the various bands of this prolific artist (besides Morphine, worth mentioning are Treat Her Right, Candyman, Supergroup). The collection, especially on the first disc, offers a few unreleased gems ("Patience", "Cocoon", the amphetamine-fueled "Goddess" and the slow-burning "Jealous Dream" are worth the price of admission alone), but also plenty of forgettable moments, mostly concentrated on the second, far weaker disc. Five years later, another double album, At Your Service, would do better, featuring unreleased tracks, alternate takes and other hidden treasures, to the delight of the Boston band's fans. While there's something of a sense of emptying out the drawers, it's undeniable that the listening experience doesn't suffer the ups and downs of Sandbox, that this time the operation is well executed, and that it has the merit of drawing attention back to a band that deserves a thoroughly central place in the history of 90s rock.

(* © Unmute, with contributions from Claudio Cataldi)

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