Like Swimming by Morphine

Like Swimming, Morphine's fourth studio album, was the Cambridge trio's first for DreamWorks and the last record that came out while Mark Sandman was alive. Paul Q. Kolderie produced it, and the formula is pure Morphine: Sandman's two-string bass, Dana Colley's baritone saxophone and Billy Conway's drums, a power trio with no need for a guitar, and Sandman crooning deep and unhurried over the top like a beat poet who wandered into a blues bar.

It's "low rock," as the band liked to call it, all slink and murk, with jazz and blues bleeding into the grooves. "Early to Bed" is the song that stuck around. Sandman died of a heart attack onstage in Italy in 1999, and The Night, the album that followed, arrived after he was gone.

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