Morphine - The Night (2000)

A pedido del público traemos más Morphine al blog cabezón, ahora con el tristemente último disco de la banda. Pero no se preocupen que enseguida venimos con más...

Artista: Morphine

Álbum: The Night
Año: 2000
Género: Rock alternativo
Duración: 50:09
Nacionalidad: EEUU

Lista de Temas:
1. The Night
2. So many ways
3. Souvenir
4. Top floor, Bottom buzzer
5. Like A mirror
6. A Good Woman is hard to Find
7. Rope on Fire
8. I'm yours,Your'e Mine
9. The way we met
10. Slow numbers
11. Take me with You

Alineación:
- Mark Sandman / Bass, Composer, Guitar (Bass), Organ, Piano, Trombone
- Dana Colley / Piano, Sax (Baritone), Sax (Bass), Sax (Tenor), Vocals
- Billy Conway / Drums, Percussion, Vocals
Guest Artist:
John Medeski / Organ
Michael Rivard / Bass
Jane Scarpantoni / Cello
Linda Veins / Vocals
Tara McManus / Vocals
Carolyn Kaylor / Vocals
Ramona Clifton / Vocals
Margaret Garrett / Vocals
Joseph Kessler / Viola
Billy Beard / Drums
Jerry Deupree / Drums
Brahim Fribgane / Drums

Ya que quieren más Morphine, aquí les dejo otro de los que comparte Marcelo. Este peculiar grupo liderado por Mark Sandman trae una propuesta musical original, donde un power trío no gira en torno a una guitarra, y eso no es demasiado particular, sobretodo si no es progresivo puro y duro (creo que el único estilo de rock donde está ampliamente aceptado el no-liderazgo de la guitarra).

Se recomienda escuchar Morphine en momentos de soledad o en un bajón colectivo de ánimos, el resultado es un estado de relajación apagada, algo triste pero equilibrado, similar a estar dopado (con morfina supongo).

Una excelente definición de la banda es la que hizo meddle en la entrada de "Cure For Pain" pero llevada a un grupo y no solamente a un disco: "si el whisky fuese un disco de música, sería cure for pain".

Morphine fue una banda de rock ALTERNATIVO muy especial. Por empezar era un power trio -a veces cuarteto- de batería, saxo y bajo. Ocasionalmente en sus discos se encuentran cuerdas y teclados. 'The Night' es el disco póstumo de la banda que encontró un abrupto final un 3 de julio de 1999 en un show en Palestrina, Latium, Italy, donde su líder compositor y cerebro musical Mark Sandman, mientras estaba interpretando el segundo tema del show fue preso de un ataque cardíaco, se desplomo y murió como debiéramos morir todos: disfrutando de las cosas que uno ama hacer. Mark Sandman amaba tanto la música que dejó con Morphine una discografía envidiable y una perla: 'The Night', disco que acababan de terminar de mezclar cuando Sandman murió. Y 'The Night' suena oscuro, denso, profundo, hipnótico; como siempre sonó Morphine en realidad, pero mejor.
Morphine estaba integrado por Mark Sandman en ¡bajo slide de 2 cuerdas! y voces, Dana Colley en saxo, Billy Conway y Jerome Deupree en percusiones varias. No hay sonidos como el sonido de Morphine; la combinación de bajo, saxo y batería es asombrosa. Uno podría pensar que extrañaría las guitarras o los teclados pero no; cada instrumento está bien utilizado, encaja perfecto, llena cada uno de los espacios posibles y juguetea con la oscuridad y el vacío.
'The Night' salió en el año 2000 y es una obra superior. Sandman expande los sonidos de la banda con nuevos instrumentos (cello, violín, arreglos de cuerdas y voces femeninas) pero sin perder su esencia. Sus letras seguían llenas de melancolía, una melancolía pegajosa. Así suena el disco:
'The Night' es quizá una de las mejores canciones que haya escuchado. Un ambiguo poema de amor, una melodía compleja, de sonido triste, bien arreglada. 'So many ways' tiene una percusión y un órgano impecable; 'Souvenir' es una canción fantasmal, pesada; 'Top Floor Bottom Buzzer' tiene swing, es funky. El saxo hace de riff mientras Sandman habla de algunas fiestas. En 'Like a Mirror' el bajo parece que explota. Infla una canción hipnótica, casi susurrada. 'Good Woman Is Hard To Find' es lo más parecido al sonido Morphine de discos anteriores. 'Rope on fire' es tremendo: cuerdas que dan calidez y un saxo barítono que dibuja alas angelicales en la canción. Otra gran letra. ' I'm Yours You're Mine' es tenebrosa. De nuevo el saxo se come la canción. 'The way we met' tiene una instrumentación mínima pero justa. 'Slow numbers' abre con el saxo calcando al bajo y la canción se construye en derredor. 'Take me with you' cierra el disco repleta de sonidos, con cuerdas, coros y rogando que 'me lleves cuando te vayas'.
'The Night' fue el último suspiro artístico de Morphine y de Sandman. Nunca una banda sonó tan distintiva, tan pesada, tan oscura y melancólica. El bajo y sus lineas, el saxo y la percusión de Morphine siguen ahí, en sus discos listos para volver a ser descubiertos y asombrar. Mark Sandman seguramente estará buscando alguna cura para el dolor en el otro lado; a nosotros nos dejó sus canciones.

Diego Passamonte

Morphine's fourth studio release, 1997's Like Swimming, was a bit of a disappointment when compared to such stellar earlier releases as Cure for Pain and Yes. After singer/two-string bassist Mark Sandman died of a heart attack on-stage in 1999, many Morphine fans assumed that Like Swimming would be the band's swansong -- thankfully, it wasn't. The Boston trio completed their fifth album just prior to Sandman's untimely passing, entitled The Night, and it's definitely an improvement over its predecessor. Whereas many of the songs on their previous album sounded unfinished and rushed, The Night sounds like a fully realized work. In fact, the band took time to focus on expanding their minimalist sound to include other instruments (cello, violin, upright bass, oud, organ) and new approaches (female backup singers, string arrangements), while Sandman produced the album himself. Highlights include the ghostly "Souvenir," the Middle Eastern sounds of "Rope on Fire," the sultry album-opening title track, and the up-tempo (by Morphine standards, anyway) "Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer." The Night shows that Morphine was just entering a new phase of their career, and it's a shame that Mark Sandman is no longer with us to follow through on this promising new direction.

Greg Prato

A couple years back, my friend Lucy was introducing Morphine for a local radio station's concert series. Her boss asked her to keep an eye on the band's tour bus while they finished the encore and signed autographs. As eyes are known to wander, hers happened to rest on a bag of mini-Krackles. The allure of Hershey's rip-off of the Nestlé Crunch bar was distracting enough that she failed to notice more important things-- like the fact that Morphine had returned to their bus, effectively catching her crunching hot chocolate and clenching the rest of the candy behind her back. To distract The Sandman, Lucy started to apologize for the aggressive hecklers in the crowd that had pestered all three bands and event staff that evening.
But all it took was the word "heckler." The Sandman immediately began talking about Steve Martin's role in "The Jerk." Mark looked distant, though there was a confidence in his dry but dreamy voice when he called Steve Martin "the hero of all hecklers." According to Sandman, "a heckler isn't lazy," and, "a heckler is your best friend." "A heckler has his eyes and ears all over you and will call you on it if you're weak. A good heckler in your audience will not only keep you on your toes but remind you why you are on stage at all." The Sandman thought if you couldn't put up with hecklers, you shouldn't be playing. Fortunatly, he liked hecklers more than he liked Hershey's, allowing Lucy a clean getaway with the chocolates.
So it only seems appropriate to keep heckling Morphine's singer and bassist Mark Sandman, who has been widely eulogized since he collapsed onstage just over a year ago. When we first heard the Sandman's two-string slide bass slinking with a steadily dark pulse beneath Dana Colley's expressive if sleazy sax, no one could deny that the Boston trio lurked in a place where creepy could be sexy. In the process, they developed an uncomfortably cool new sound.
During their tenure as jazz-rock saviors, Morphine's sticky blues-drenched elixir drew more of cult than a crowd. And as their last two releases lacked any coherence beyond the band's trademark mood, which had become somewhat predictable, they also avoided relevancy. It seemed that the majority of the people still listening were those inside the band's cult-like following who made Morphine an especially apt name for their fix. But hecklers are more critical than addicts, and those with the commitment to pester wanted more than Yes offered and panned Like Swimming.
While an answer to those heckler, Morphine's fifth album, The Night, still warrants a pesky jab or two. The recording, which Sandman produced, sounds fuller than its predecessors, incorporating strings, organ, and additional percussion. The album updates the trio's sound without the forced experimental quality of some of the weaker material on Yes or the unsuccessful lounge-pop sleeper, Like Swimming. The shift in tempo and variation of arrangements here (including backup singers) puts Morphine back on a track where people outside their immediate fanbase might start paying attention again.
But the lyrics leave you wishing Mark Sandman was still around to heckle. In "Souvenir," he reflects, "I remember meeting you, you were super low/ Surrounded by the sounds of saxophones." In "Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer" he tells us what we already knew-- that "Top floor, bottom buzzer" will inevitably lead to, "By the time Pricilla put the Al Green on/ The bottle was gone." The abstractions and attractions going up in flames and down in parachutes seem like Morphine's stock content served up with the smug laziness of a host passing around his blue-ribbon jailhouse chili for the third barbeque in a row. Song titles like "A Good Woman is Hard to Find" and "I'm Yours, You're Mine" don't surprise with shock, subtlety or extra garlic in the chili to fend off us hecklers who want to hear more than kidney beans in our low-register cult-rock.

Kristin Sage Rockermann

Before he died of a heart attack onstage last July, Mark Sandman specialized in leaving things unsaid; he was a master minimalist who created mood as much by what he left out as by what he put in. When he lets out a soft "whooh" at the end of the percolating mood piece "Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer," it qualifies as catharsis by Morphine standards. That said, The Night is the Boston band's most painstakingly layered and ambitious album, with cello, organ and oud expanding on the trio's original sax-y swagger. "Rope on Fire" flirts with raga rock, "Take Me With You" swoons on a carpet of strings, and "Like a Mirror" plays a freak-show nocturne on Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones. Otherwise, two-string bassist Sandman, reedman Dana Colley and drummer Billy Conway do what they do best: They're an introspective funk band that kills with insinuation rather than booty-bumping bravado, letting the groove moan and the notes slide, slip and finally fade into silence. In these cryptic spaces, bebop and the blues are implied, and Sandman lets unfinished thoughts linger. "I want to be happy, but not all the time," he purrs in "A Good Woman Is Hard to Find," as good a way as any to describe the sensual anxiety that fills Morphine's Night-crawler finale.

Greg Kot

La música fue definida por el mismo grupo como "Low Rock" (???). "The Night" es el último disco del grupo, tristemente póstumo. Trae consigo su particular sonido que los acompañó en toda su carrera añadiendo nuevas atmósferas.
Y le seguirán más disquitos de la banda en los límites de mi tiempo disponible.
Y quedan disponibles los demás discos seguramente con los comentarios de CalleNep.