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The Night could very well be Morphine's best work to date. Sandman and company finish the thoughts of 1997's Like Swimming by adding rich, subtle layers to their trio's thick sonic weave without diluting the band's strengths.
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Sounds nothing like a swan song, but rather like what should have been a mid-career album from a band whose ideas and abilities were still in full effect.
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The Night finds the trio expanding its sound beyond its periodic tendency to fall back on noirish shtick... a marvelous high note.
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Checkout.comAlthough it is a more orchestrated affair than the stripped down sound this band is known for, The Night is as impressive as any of their previous efforts.
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Sandman spent two years in his home studio experimenting with the band's dark, often minimalist sound and the result is this lusher, more fully realised album, whose brooding, narcotic Len-Cohen-goes-jazz title track is followed by songs that are variously cool, unsettling, sensual, personal and party-time funky.
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A haunting, majestic album, almost as good as the band's greatest record, "Cure for Pain".... as spacious and roomy as Morphine have always been, with added texture and layers.
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From the albums start the band's signature "low rock" sound is evident. But impressively so are a variety of new sounds, from female backing singers to the inclusion of such non traditional Morphine elements as violin, grand piano and acoustic guitar....on many levels "The Night" is a success...
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Morphine's most ambitious and accomplished work.
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Morphine's sonic scope remains typically sparse...
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The album is in some ways visionary, but it many ways it is just another Morphine album.
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A sad and beautiful farewell from one of the most innovative artists of the past decade.
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The Night is the Boston band's most painstakingly layered and ambitious album, with cello, organ and oud expanding on the trio's original sax-y swagger.
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Whereas many of the songs on their previous album sounded unfinished and rushed, The Night sounds like a fully realized work.
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This album shows a band eager to expand its creative range. One wonders, sadly, what might have come next.
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Merely a decent Morphine album.
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The trio's nearly sub-sonic blues, jazz and beat poetry hybrid once again evoking a dangerous Spanish Harlem drinking den while Near Eastern influences and a subtler instrumental mesh hint at what might yet have been.
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The album updates the trio's sound without the forced experimental quality of some of the weaker material on Yes or the unsuccessful lounge-pop sleeper, Like Swimming.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 5
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Mixed: 0 out of 5
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Negative: 1 out of 5
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Aug 28, 2018A bit inconsistent, but when it's good, it's really good. Check it out, there's a handful of gems here.