Album of the Day — October 15
Morphine — Cure for Pain
Morphine — Cure for Pain
15.October.2020
Morphine
Cure for Pain
1993
Mark Sandman had been around the music scene for a while before he formed Morphine in 1989.
Sandman was an indie-rock icon who was a staple on the Cambridge/Boston music scene in the 1980s. He was a member of Treat Her Right before going on to form the trio Morphine.
The band took shape in 1989 when Sandman roped in saxophonist Dana Cooley and drummer Jerome Deupree — and thus, Morphine was born.
As a prolific musician who experimented with home-made instruments Sandman, in Morphine, he chose to play a single-stringed bass guitar of his own making with a slide (he would later add a second string).
A two-stringed slide bass player with a distinct baritone voice, a sax and drummer gave Morphine a unique sounding band in an era of unique sounding bands.
The band quickly gained a following and, by 1993, had landed a recording contract with Rykodisc. Their first album, Good, first released independently in 1991, received positive reviews and helped the band grow its fan base outside New England.
Once signed to Rykodisc, the label distributed Good even wider, broadening the band's fan base and priming the stage for their second full-length album, Cure for Pain, in September of 1993.
Produced by Paul Q. Kolderie (Uncle Tupelo, Pixies) and Mark Sandman, Cure for Pain firmly establishes Morphine as a band with a very distinctive sound.
As a live band, Morphine was always a three-piece. In the studio, however, the band, particularly Sandman, added sonic textures to the songs by incorporating guitar, piano, and electric organ. He even played his own self-invented “tritar” — a guitar with two guitar strings and one bass string.
Dana Colley played primarily baritone saxophone, but he also played soprano or tenor saxes and the rare bass saxophone. Ripping a page from the Roland Kirk playbook, he sometimes played two saxes at once. Colley would also occasionally play some percussion.
Jerome Deupree drummed on most of Cure for Pain but was replaced by Sandman’s former bandmate Billy Conway for Morphine’s tour.
It was college radio that first grabbed hold of Morphine and Cure for Pain. In the early 1990s, college radio was beginning its slow descent from importance. Like much of the industry, by the late 1990s, it had bottomed out.
But in the early 90s college radio still had gravitas.
As a result, Morphine got a fair amount of attention when the single from Cure for Pain, “Buena,” got airplay. Luckily, because college radio was considerably less rigid than commercial radio, they soon picked up on some of the other tracks like “Thursday” (about infidelity), “Mary Won’t You Call My Name” (a darker kind of love), and “A Head With Wings” (not entirely sure, but helluva jam).
But even among such great songs, it’s the bittersweet and haunting “In Spite of Me” that resonates.
The affecting song carries the truth of watching a lost love carry on.
In Spite of Me
Last night I told a stranger all about you
They smiled patiently with disbelief
I always knew you would succeed no matter what you tried
And I know you did it all in spite of me
Still I’m proud to have known you for the short time that I did
Glad to have been a step up on your way
Proud to be part of your illustrious career
And I know you did it all in spite of me
In spite of me
Late last night, I saw you in my living room
You seemed so close but yet so cold
For a long time, I thought that you’d be coming back to me
Those kinds of thoughts can be so cruel
So cruel
And I know you did it all in spite of me
In spite of me
As Sandman was the principal lyricist for Morphine, much has been made about his lyrics. Whether the songs are personal reflections or fiction is not known. He was a deeply personal man. Known to be volatile, particularly about his age (he was older than many of his contemporaries & bandmates), so one can only speculate.
Be they fact or fiction; these lyrics are some of the more literary songs of the era. Morphine’s Cure for Pain is a collection of well-crafted songs with a sound so unlike anyone else.
CRITICS:
Greg Prato at AllMusic wrote: “Mark Sandman’s two-string slide bass and Dana Colley’s sax work help create impressive atmospherics throughout the album. Cure for Pain was unquestionably one of the best and most cutting-edge rock releases of the ‘90s.”
Arion Berger in Rolling Stone took the other side of the coin: “The Boston trio Morphine evokes the zonked swing of lounge jazz and the grind of dirty blues while maintaining firm rock & roll convictions…The group’s most serious limitation is the voice of bassist-singer Mark Sandman, who makes a huge effort to sound suave but has no imagination…But if his vocals can be faulted, Sandman’s songwriting can’t. He’s literate and sharp…”
Released in 1993, Cure for Pain had the misfortune of arriving at the same time grunge was taking off. Even still, Morphine was able to carve out a niche for itself. The unique lyricism of Sandman’s lyrics and the sound of the band also lent themselves to other mediums.
It didn’t go unnoticed.
In 1994, before he was an Academy Award-nominated Writer/Director, David O. Russell wrote an independent film called Spanking the Monkey — about a teenager's incestuous relationship with his mother. Russell leaned heavily on two tracks from the album — “Sheila” and “In Spite of Me” — to add tension to the film.
To this day, when I think of the film, I still see the last scene of Jeremy Davies hitching a ride as “In Spite of Me” plays — it’s brilliant.
Songs from Cure for Pain have also popped up in:
The Sopranos
Daria
Beavis and Butthead
Get Shorty (the movie)
Tragically, Sandman collapsed on stage in Italy on July 3, 1999, performing with Morphine. His death, at the age of 46, was the result of a heart attack.
Luckily, the music he created with Morphine lives on. The loss of Mark Sandman and the songs on Cure for Pain prove that there still isn’t a cure for pain.