Morphine (2) – Good

I see this will unfortunately be getting the reissue treatment courtesy of Music On Vinyl , also known as MP3s On Vinyl, and will probably be barebones with none of the bonus tracks or quality packaging of the Run Out Groove deluxe reissue of this great album last year, which is still easily available for about the $40+ that MOV will undoubtedly charge for their lo-res scanned artwork and cheap, no-range pressing, as is usually the case.

I am sore MOV apologists like “Guvna Foghorn” and “.Richard Tosser.” will be gobbling this one up, but all serious vinyl enthusiasts will already know to avoid like the plague.

Good is a thick luscious album, one defined by the song “You Look Like Rain,” a blues based bit of be-bop, laced with sultry slippery grooves designed for the night, a hyper extension of wayward on the road Jack Kerouac darkness, an open window on a city one’s just landed in, wide-eyed and electrified, jazzed fingers dancing on the edge of glass of bourbon with a telephone in your other hand, poised to dial, though at 3AM, there’s just no one to call who’s gonna meet you on the street forty-two stories below.

Morphine lay out an intoxicatingly original sound, some storytelling woven around haunting lyrics, a deep warm bass (played with a slide) and a blistering saxophone, all influenced by 50’s beat jazz, though whether this sort of music ever actually existed is certainly debatable, yet it’s the kind of slow-paced energetic sound, imaginary or not, that’s lingered in my head since the day I was born.

The music is entirely accessible, even charming, the minimal arrangements are so seductively satisfying that some of it could easily be commercialized, though I for one would hang my head and cry if Good ever became mainstream. With Morphine coming of age in the early 1990’s in of all places, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the trio, all former members of little know punk bands reached into themselves and brought to light Morphine. Musically their sound moves between the noir-ish sordidness of a black & white film soundtrack and grunge meets jazz, though with a more mysterious resourceful panoramic sweep of emboldened esoteric emancipation that simply wrapped itself around my lungs and wouldn’t let go.

Review by Jenell Kesler

Good by Morphine is a masterpiece. It is a singular wonder of moody, mysterious, spacious, graceful, gritty, revelatory, beautiful zero gravity.
While their entire catalogue is fantastic, their debut, Good, stands as the grand mission statement that informed all that was to come.