The Night

1	The Night 4:48
2	So Many Ways 4:01
3	Souvenir 4:40
4	Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer 5:43
5	Like a Mirror 5:26
6	A Good Woman Is Hard to Find 4:14
7	Rope on Fire 5:36
8	I'm Yours, You're Mine 3:46
9	The Way We Met 2:59
10	Slow Numbers 3:58
11	Take Me with You 4:53

Barnes & Noble

As suggested by their cool, neo-noir tone, Morphine's songs are typically set sometime during the dimly lit hours between a midnight cocktail and a final, predawn embrace. On the trio's fifth and appropriately titled final recording -- overshadowed as it is by the fatal onstage heart attack of frontman Mark Sandman in July 1999 -- the darkness of that setting takes on a new, haunting permanence. Morphine's slithery blues glide, propelled by the rumble of Sandman's two-string slide bass and the suggestive moan of Dana Colley's baritone sax, takes on an especially sad, narcotic beauty here, subtly embellished by hints of piano, cello, organ, and some R&B-informed female backing vocals. The album's hypnotic closer, "Take Me with You," may be its most eerily prophetic: "Take me with you when you go/Don't leave me alone," Sandman coolly pleads, counterbalanced by Colley's jazzy accents and some poignantly swaying strings. He seems strangely out of his hipster character, as if he knew the fun wouldn't last much longer. THE NIGHT is as chilling as it is seductive. Colin Helms

All Music Guide

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