Morphine

Boston's Morphine were one of the most cryptic and brilliant bands of the Nineties, so much so that it's impossible to pin down their style using the usual labels coined by music critics. Indeed, music journalists in the last decade of the twentieth century had a field day inventing new terms to describe the most interesting artists of the period, from the slo-core of Codeine and Low to the post-rock of Bark Psychosis and Slint, but none of them managed to nail down in a single word the romantic, minimalist musical proposition of Morphine. In short, it was a lost cause from the start to try to define a rock trio that had no guitar in its ranks, and whose sound rested on bass (Mark Sandman), drums (Jerome Dupree) and baritone sax (Dana Colley).

It was often Mark Sandman himself — bassist as well as the band's singer — who came up with improbable, fanciful definitions for his own music, definitions that were often ironic and grotesque, but not without foundation. To journalists who kept asking him to describe the music Morphine played, he would respond with genuine "musical neologisms": "baritone experience" paraphrased the legendary Jimi Hendrix trio while highlighting their baritone-heavy sound; "low-rock", on the other hand, emphasized the low, heavy registers the three musicians operated in. But the most brilliant definition of all was "implicit grunge", which conveyed the idea of music that was devastating yet implosive, noisy and autistic at the same time.

Besides dispensing these playful definitions of his own music, Sandman was also a great sonic experimenter and a sharp inventor of new instruments. To begin with, his was no ordinary bass: it was in fact a "fretless" bass, meaning without frets, fitted moreover with only two strings and played slide-style. Another of his inventions was the tritar, derived from single-stringed African instruments and assembled using two guitar strings and one bass string.

"Cure For Pain" is the band's second album, following the equally excellent "Good", and it's one of the records most acclaimed and beloved by fans of the Boston outfit. The album contains thirteen tracks in all, eleven of which are proper songs, while two — placed significantly at the opening and close of the record — are brief instrumentals (the narcotic "Dawna" and the requiem for acoustic guitar and percussion, "Miles Davis' Funeral").

Among the early tracks, the whirling syncopations of "Buena" and the dark swing of "A Head With Wings" stand out, but "I'm Free Now", with its funereal sax and catacomb-deep vocals, and the restrained frenzy of "All Wrong" also shine with a dirty light of their own.

"Candy", on the other hand, is a quiet masterpiece about urban loneliness, a portrait of metropolitan desolation worthy of Edward Hopper's paintings or George Segal's "living sculptures".

"In Spite Of Me" is the record's surprise: Sandman's cavernous voice turns metaphysical, the heavy arrangements of the earlier tracks give way to tender mandolin chords, and the hazy, chaotic atmospheres shift into bucolic harmonies. For once, sweetness wins out over pain and becomes its cure.

After this ecstatic interlude, the album picks back up with the depraved boogie of "Thursday", followed by the splendid title track, which marries blues passion with jazz craftsmanship. The murkiest Morphine, however, is found on "Mary Won't You Call My Name?" (a track charged with enormous erotic tension), "Let's Take A Trip Together" (with its listless, sickly gait) and "Sheila" (a genuine sadomasochistic obsession).

Morphine's work never spawned any followers, and, on reflection, it couldn't have: firstly, because their musical vision was so bold and personal that it discouraged anyone from trying to follow in their footsteps; secondly, because their stylistic formula was perhaps unrepeatable, fusing as it did jazz and new wave, minimalist instinct and blues fury, Nick Cave and Velvet Underground. And finally, because Morphine were utterly foreign to any kind of rockstar posturing.

Even the death of Mark Sandman, which occurred on stage in Palestrina in 1999, had nothing theatrical or mythological about it, unlike what happened with other major artists who defined Nineties rock. There have often been attempts to portray Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley as figures fated for an early death, digging up premonitory signs in their songs. This necrophiliac game, even when attempted with an anti-star like Mark Sandman, thankfully never worked, leaving the sordid beauty of his music untouched.

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30/08/2007