Morphine

Morphine has to be the best kept secret in indie rock.  For a decade, they existed, quietly making fantastic music; then their singer died.  Still, no one knows them.

I got into Morphine because Collective Soul covered them - they passable cover of "You Speak My Language" on the massively underrated Blender album.  So I checked them out.  Downloaded a few songs.  Liked what I heard.  Downloaded a few more.  Etc.  I have dozens of Morphine songs on my computer now, and several albums.  I'd have more, but you might have picked up that I acquire songs slowly - rarely an album at a time.

One of the things I like about Morphine is a minor technical thing, but it still matters - their lineup was weird.  Drums, slide bass (like slide guitar, but bass) and a baritone sax.  That was basically it.  It goes back to something I've thought for a while - we get so locked into the guitar bass drums sometimes keys rock band lineup, that we ignore a lot of good possibilities.  How many bands would have prospered if they'd thought to put an ad up for a saxophone player?

Morphine concentrated almost entirely on the low range of the instruments - the slide bass would play these slippery riffs, the horn would bubble up, but never higher than mid-range, and Mark Sandman's baritone would sing these bizarre, almost Beat poetry lyrics.  The whole vibe was like jazz club full of menace.  My favorite line from a song of theirs: "Found a woman who was soft but she's also hard/While I slept, she nailed down my heart."  Second favorite: "She had a smile that swirled, she had a smile that curled, she had a smile that swerved all over the road."

Every once in a while I'll put Morphine on at work - it's mellow enough to usually make it past the radar, but still sometimes a pounding groove like "Eleven O'Clock" will raise an eyebrow.  The only problem with Morphine is that they had a tendency to go over the same ground a lot - they were one of those bands that had a unique sound, and stuck with it.

Still, to dip into every once in a while, it was a great sound.  That's one of the reasons I love indie rock - you find these weird bands, with their own sound, and you can sample them - add a little of their spice to your collection, dip in, and then head off to something else.