Editorial Reviews
Cure for Pain
Music Review:
Music Review
Music: Trance Europe, Vol. 1: Electronic Body Experience
Rhythm & Stealth + Remixes [Import]
Seven Days in Sunny June Pt.2 [CD-single] [Import]
Munir Bashir and the Iraqui Traditional Music Ensemble
Piccinni - L'Americano / S. Edwards · Ciofi · Colaianni · Donadini · E. Hull
Possessed by the Ouija Board...
Amazon.com
Cure for Pain is a most unlikely artistic breakthrough from a thoroughly unlikely band. Fronted by saxophone and two-string slide bass guitar, Morphine earned a modicum of critical praise for their prior recording, Good, but Cure for Pain has a harder edge and a distinctly bigger sound. "Buena" urges the listener, with singer and bassist Mark Sandman's best come-hither baritone voice, "closer to the front of the stage," and then "Candy" tells a love-lost story that could come right out of Tom Waits's book. But for all the strange possibilities inherent in a guitarless band that plays off their singer's wry lyrics, Morphine's sophomore effort shows their versatility, their ability to be a rock band in a very unrock, rolling-baritone-saxophone way. Alas, singer Mark Sandman perished in action on an Italian stage on July 3, 1999. --Andrew Bartlett
From the Label
On this album, Morphine expand their unique sound, while sticking to their trademark principle of subtraction. With the sensual title track as a plea for relief in a world that offers none ("Someday there'll be a cure for pain/ That's the day I throw my drugs away," goes the chorus), through the down 'n' out fatalism of "In Spite of Me," into "Thursday", a tale of infidelity and jealousy, all the way to the Muddy-Waters-on-Ganja ruminations of "Head With Wings," Morphine pulls emotional clarity... read more