Morphine - Cure for pain (1993)

Oh, yeah! This is what I needed tonight, I really like Morphine! All their stuff is great and I recomend any of their records. Recently i have seen a filf about the life of mark Sandman, Cure for pain. he had a hard life, lot of suffering because of lossing two of his brothers.. lot of pain in his family. He found the cure in his music. He was just great! He made up a two strings bass and with the band Morphine develope an incredible sound with just a trio bass-drums-saxo!

Here it is a reviel of the record good taken from the website www.blindcarre.com

Cure for Pain (1993) is the second album by the trio of Cambridge (Massachusetts), led by bassist and vocalist Mark Sandman, published on September 14, 1993, 20 years ago.

After receiving rave reviews for his first LP, Good (1992), his second work allowed them to reach a wider audience. Cure for Pain is an album that evolved from their first album, which was exceeded by forcefulness and quality in the compositions. It is the best and most successful album by Morphine, a masterpiece that contains most of the more classic songs of the band. Songs such as Buena, All Wrong, In Spite of Me, Thursday, Cure for pain, Mary Won’t You Call My Name?, or Sheila, involve (and transmit) rabid and intense feelings that are not available to everyone.

The two-string slide bass of Mark Sandman mixed with the exquisite sound of Dana Colley‘s sax, and with the Sandman compositions that always touch and blend in melancholy, intrigue, and darkness, made that Cure for Pain was, and still being, one of most impressive cutting-edge works in recent decades. The originality of the band was well reaffirmed with their second album.

Mark Sandman used the term “Low-rock” to describe the band, sometimes also “Fuck-rock”. The truth is that Sandman had already a good musical background linked to roots blues and rock mainly, with his former band Treat Her Right. With Morphine he remained bound to the sounds of blues and rock but with new shades of jazz, thanks to the good work of Dana Colley’s sax, something that produced “the turn of the screw”.

 

Sandman, who liked homemade instruments, went from the 3-strings guitar with Treat Her Right to the 2-strings slide bass (first even tried it with only 1 string), which along with the aforementioned sax, and the darkness of the front man, gave to the band that unmistakable and characteristic sound.

Cure for Pain sinks you and lifts you steadily, it doesn’t let you choke completely, whips you, paralyzes you, but just before you fall to the ground it holds out his hand and put you back in your place. It could be the soundtrack for a life, for many lives, but especially for Mark Sandman’s life, who collapsed and died of a heart attack on stage in front of 2,000 people during a concert at the Giardini del Principe in Palestrina (Rome, Italy), July 3, 1999. R.I.P.