Cure for Pain by Morphine

Cure for Pain, Morphine's second album, came out on Rykodisc in September 1993 with Paul Q. Kolderie producing, and nobody else sounded like this. The Cambridge, Massachusetts trio skipped the electric guitar entirely: Mark Sandman thumped a two-string bass and sang in a deep, unhurried croon, Dana Colley blew baritone saxophone, and the drums kept it all low and slinky. They called it low rock, and it oozes blues and jazz and smoke.

Founding drummer Jerome Deupree played most of the record before health problems forced him out, and Billy Conway, who took his place, drums on the title track. "Buena" struts like a gangster in a good suit, "Thursday" swaggers with a sly grin, and the title song is pure late-night melancholy. Filmmakers noticed: "Sheila" and "In Spite of Me" turned up in Spanking the Monkey, and "Buena" and "Dawna" landed in the first season of The Sopranos.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.