Customer Reviews

The Night

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"It's too dark to see the landmarks
And I don't want your good luck charms,
I hope you're waitin for me
Across your carpet of stars.

You're the night, Lilah,
You're everything that we can't see.
Lilah,
You're the possibility."

One is inclined to say the same of the late, great Mr. Sandman himself.

From the opening notes- sliding bass, subtle sax and spare (yet funky) drums, this CD grabs your hand, slips into your head, and takes hold of your soul. The opening title track- the first time I heard it- it's one of my favorite songs by any group. Damn I wish I knew what it is that he mutters at the end when the song fades out. In fact, I used to only listen to that one song, didn't think so much of the rest of the CD.

You might say it grew on me- or perhaps in me. The lyrics to 'Night,'are the most elegant that Sandman ever penned, in my opinion.

The saxophone- I use the verb 'floors' often in reviews, but that's because I tend to only review things that floor me. As in make me scrape my jaw off the floor like a Tim Burton hero and just stand in wonder. The sax floors me on this one.

The songs are superb. Lyrically- well, let's just say that The Night stands out. The rest are decent enough, the lyrics work well in each song's context, even the simplistic 'Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer,' doesn't grate. Sandman's voice is in fine form, working well in all it's sultry, monochromatic luxuriousness.

'A Good Woman is Hard to Find,' calls to mind the scene in Lynch's 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,' in the odd bar/club (I remember it being a red scene) with naked and half-naked females gyrating around to a slow, psychedelic, rockabilly song. But played faster and with a bluesy guitar that really fits in. 'Rope on Fire,' is a middle eastern-esque number: it's highly evocative, and the saxophone fits snugly into the harmonic minor arrangement. 'Like A mirror,' just seems to drip and boom away, droning fantastically while Sandman murmurs- "I'm nothing... til you look at me." 'Souvenir,' builds and builds to a crescendo of hard sax/bass ecstasy. 'The Way We Met,' is the only song that doesn't do anything for me. Not a bad song mind you- it fits the mood and I suppose adds to the whole, just doesn't strike me as an important song.

Technically- this is easily the mostly fully realized, densely structured album that Morphine have released. Far better than 'Cure for Pain,' a great album, one of their best... It doesn't hold a candle to 'The Night,' though I guess the question is- which do you like more: the stark trio or this one with strings, oud, violins, guitars, keys, bongos, a variety of middle eastern instruments. On 'The Night,' Morphine let go of their standard spare, trio format and the results are mind-blowing. I love it. It makes me want to get into my car at night and drive. All night. Just drive aimlessly and let the music wash over me. How someone can sing so monotone and evoke such passion... Sandman and Co. show that a well-crafted understatement can drop you much faster than some pierced and tattooed ingrate yelling about how insecure he is and how the walls are closing in. Don't get down with the sickness. Get down with The Night.

The Night is almost the antithesis of Gerswhin's Rhapsody in Blue. Whereas the Rhapsody was a rather upbeat soundtrack for the hustle and bustle of the city, The Night provides the sountrack for the parts of the city that are tucked away. The back streets and alleys; the dead streets at 3 o'clock in the morning. Morphine had always aimed to capture this sort of sound, and they finally nail it with this, their last and greatest album.

Which is not to say it's an album actually ABOUT the city. It's about a lot of things. It's an album about sex (So Many Ways), memories (Souvenir), good times (Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer) and strength through love (The Night). It's an album about The Night and the people in it. It's full of darkness and fire. Mark Sandman, who wrote all the songs, is truly the Jim Jarmusch of the music world. He's a 'poet of the night'. "You're the night, Lilah/ a little girl, lost in the woods/ you're a folk tale/ The unexplainable."

This album also serves as a kind of farewell by the late Mark Sandman. The grim cacophony of saxophones, trombones and trumpets in the instrumental 'Come on Houston' assumes an added signficance considering he died before the album was finally published. Nobody could take his place. His smooth baritone was truly amazing. The Amazon reviewer should be praised for the brilliant quote "it's always three a.m. in Mark Sandman's gypsy soul." That about sums it up.

Buy this album. It gets better every time you listen to it.

Sadly, we can add Mark Sandman to that list of rock musicians who we lost in their primes. The throaty voice that was one of several elements that made the shady jazz-rock trio, Morphine, so unique was forever silenced when Mr. Sandman died of an unexpected heart attack in June of 1999. Shortly before his death, however, his band recorded some of their most exceptional work.

Like David Bowie's Low or The Doors' Strange Days, Morphine's final album, The Night, has a short, simple title that completely sums-up the disc's atmosphere. The Night is quintessential three AM music. Gloomy, slinky, devious and suave, these songs sound as if they were written specifically for a misty, mysterious night in New York City or Chicago. It is a sound that Morphine had been exploring ever since their formation in 1992. The band's instrumentation of Billy Conway's tightly-trimmed drumming, Dana Colley's wavy saxophone and Mr. Sandman's murky, two-string, slide bass, along with his deep, brooding voice and detached, downhearted lyrics have always echoed with full moons, lost souls and ambiguous intensions.

The Night improves upon everything Morphine has ever done. "Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer" is the capstone of their series of off-beat party tunes, defeating even their previous album's "Early to Bed" and "A Good Woman Is Hard to Find" is another superb addition to that cannon. "I'm Yours, You're Mine" and "The Way We Met" are Mr. Sandman's most interesting attempts to straighten out complicated relationships, even better than "Claire" and "Candy." The title track and "Take Me With You" are his best all-out odes to desperation, beating even "Cure for Pain," possibly the band's best song before the release of The Night. This is the sound of a band that had their style down to a science and was apt to do even better at what they do best. Sadly, we will not be hearing any new developments in this exceptional band, so sadly halted at its peak.

Released posthumously, the Night stands out as the culminating masterpiece of the Boston trio. The low-sounding buzzing monotonic jazz-rock vibrates from the speakers without becoming too boring or annoying. Dim the lights, put your feet up, close your eyes and enjoy.

I was introduced to Morphine in 1993, when they had just released their classic album "Cure for Pain". The low-rock minimalistic sound with that incredible baritone saxophone just did the trick to me. The songs on that album are quite open to a general audience, with choruslines of many songs like " Buena", "Candy" and "All Wrong" remaining in your head. The sound was low, but quite crisp and clear. Coming from the sound of their more jazz-like debut album "Good" (1993) it had evolved. This debut album contains some jewels like "The Saddest Song" and "The other Side". However, the characteristic baritone sax sound was not that prominent then. I can remember once hearing a live version of "the saddest song" during their Cure for Pain time, when Dana Colley had added more sax to the song; it was great!

While anticipation was high, the third album was a bit of a disappointment to me. It was clear to me that the music was evolving further, but IMHO the general sound on "YES" was too experimental. "Free Love" however, contained by far the lowwest baritone sax note ever striking my ears and I found myself up to my stereo set increasing bass to a maximum to relive the feeling I encountered on the one occasion I heard Morphine live (1994): the feeling of my pants vibrating to the dark low waves of the sax. The disappointment about YES was the reason I never bought "Like Swimming".

When I heard Sandman had collapsed on stage, but not until he had handed in material for a full studio album, I was curious what his final musical accomplishment had been. From the moment I heard the titlesong "The Night", it just struck me: this was some of the best Morphine had produced. Integrating the jazz-like sound of their first album with the catchy choruslines of Cure for Pain and topped with the experimental flavor of YES Morphine had proven to advance. "Top floor, Bottom buzzer" reminded me again of the some of the cure for pain songs. "Souvenir" struck me as a very jazzy song (especially the drumming), more like the songs on "Good", but then with the improvement I have already been talking about. Then again, The Night also contains unique material like "Rope on Fire". Never in my life I have heard a saxophone play this catchy eastern tune. Marvellous! In "Take me with You", minimalism has been reduced with even backing vocals; but, I have to say, the combination of Sandman's intriguing monotonic sound combined with more instruments (even orchestrated) and backing vocals is very nice to the ear.

To me, "the Night" is a Morphine classic with overall quality rising to the level of "Cure for Pain", but with a sound which has evolved and grown. Sandman left us where he was best, in the sound of the Night.

The Night, a place we all love to be, with this cd of dark velvet rooms and smoke filled lyrics, we are taken aback. To the interior galleries of a departed friend.

The title track stands out as a testement, dreamlike yet melodic it takes us on quite the journey through a lo-music landscape ruled by one man Mark Sandman.

They are able to journey into the outer regions of music and still be pallateable, hooky and Mysterious.

This is a departure from albums of the past, but still well worth the purchase, it has been a daily listen in our house ad will be for some time. It exudes a meditative quality, taking us far out but keeping it down to earth.

Mark's passing was an incredible loss both to us and to the genre he helped so define. The Night Firms that up.

From us down here, we miss you brother.

This is the most subdued of Morphine's works. Sandman is after new moods, quieter moods. Bass is prominent on this album, as if Sandman has been listening to Massive Attack or something. The sax is oftentimes more background atmosphere and color, with less emphasis on lead riffing or rocking out. It is truly a shame that this will be the swan song, now that Sandman has passed on. The soft desperation that this CD evokes is truly haunting given the context, though, in principle not unlike Joy Division's *Closer* (but not in sound) in adding that special resonance. A stellar final effort from one of the best and most original bands of the 90s. If you don't have Cure for Pain yet, here is your chance to rectify that mistake, too!

THE NIGHT is Morphine's final and best studio album. They push the noirish, low-rock sound to new levels by adding strings, piano, female backup singers, and yes - even a guitar. With all this layering of instruments it makes for a great album to listen to with headphones just to catch every little tasty piece of this heavy musical pie. The music is dreamlike, exotic and surreal while the late Mark Sandman's beat-poet meets Raymond Chandler lyrics seem to imply and wander around dark themes like lust, unrequited love and obsession. Sandman's oh-so-cool delivery and Dana Colley's serpent-like sax even give a romp 'Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer' a subversive, sleazy air to it. Some of the lyrics are more than a little ironic, given Sandman's tragic passing and give the album that much more of a bittersweet punch. The remaining members are touring under the name 'Orchestra Morphine' as a way of closure; but even though this album was intended to be more of a departure, it brings their career full circle.

Some would tell you that this is not Morphine's best studio album, and probably it's not (though I can't seem to pick a favorite among them). But on this posthumous disc from Sandman and company, the band name Morphine never seemed so apt. The low grooves and muted studio flourishes give this disc a shadowy cohesiveness, and even when they experiment with their sound, as on the track "So Many Ways", it pays off.
This disc just makes me feel really good, especially the song "Slow Numbers"---so great. I'd even recommend this album to first time listeners.

Morphine's last studio album is also their best. This album finds the group branching out with more experimental sounds while retaining the the utterly sexy low funk of their previous work. There are middle eastern flavors to tracks, creepy mantras (as on "Like a Mirror") and some sax that will leave smoke coming out of your ears.

This is music from some noir universe--an utterly cool mixing of the sensibilities of Leonard Cohen, Raymond Chandler and Jean-Luc Godard.

When I--and the rest of the world--first heard Morphine, the band seemed like a fantastic, alternitive rock sideshow. Back in that heady, 1992-'93 post-Nevermind heyday, when Cobain and Co. opened the major label gates for hundreds of little expermental bands, Morphine's hipster jazz rock seemed like just another wonderful herb to add to the underground stew. Their use of the baritone sax was quite a hook.

But after three or four albums, you couldn't help but think that Morphine had painted themselves into a corner. About forty different songs, about three different musical textures. The bartitone sax which had been their trademark was becomming an artistc ball and chain. It became difficult not to dismiss the band as a one trick beatnick pony: albeit an increadably enjoyable one.

The Night shows that Morphine had grander plans in mind: they were not only making their fans an album, but themselves an artistic future. For every surefire Morphine calling card ("Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer,") there was a daring experment: "Rope On Fire" uses an Oud. "I'm Yours, You're Mine" uses the sax not as a musical backbone, but to punctuate its daring rhythms and provide sonic variation. The title track, like some others on the album, uses a cello to provide an extra texture.

Many bands begin to throw extra sounds into the mix when they have run out of ideas, and their contract says it's album time. But The Night is Morphine testing out a whole new vocabulary, not gasping for musical oxygen. For every old sound they use in these songs, they contrast it with a new one. The contrast is intensly dynamic.

The Night is gripping and expansive. Art-rock in the best sense of the term : a testing of new possibilities for a great band. Listening, you'll feel intensely fufilled, and then intensely cheated. If Sandman had lived, there was no limit to where Morphine could have gone next.