As the years pass, it becomes increasingly hard to accept that Mark Sandman was a real person—the musician who created that music, the man who looked that way, the fact that his name was indeed Mark Sandman, and the manner in which he died. He felt like a character Jim Jarmusch might conjure in a dream. Sandman delivered a deep, sultry baritone and wielded a two‑string slide bass as the frontman of Morphine, a jazzy Boston rock outfit that essentially sounded like nothing else before or since. Morphine released four records, including the gold‑standard 1993 classic Cure For Pain, before Sandman died of an onstage heart attack during a 1999 performance in Italy. A fifth Morphine album, The Night, arrived in 2000, after his passing. Now, more than a quarter of a century later, another posthumous Morphine release is poised for release.
Just before year’s end, Morphine will unveil Cocoon, a fresh album assembled from material Mark Sandman left behind in his final years. Prior to working on The Night, Morphine initiated—and then abandoned—a series of sessions with Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade, the Boston producers who helped shape Hole’s Live Through This, Radiohead’s Pablo Honey, Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression, and Morphine’s own Cure For Pain. (They ultimately produced three Morphine albums, the others being 1992’s Good and 1995’s Yes.)
Many years later, Kolderie and Sandman’s partner Sabine Hrechdakian revisited those tapes, transferring the audio and selecting songs to include. Kolderie mixed the record, and Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley contributed new parts for three tracks. (Morphine operated as a spare trio, typically employing two‑string bass, sax, and drums—no guitars. Again: Hard to believe they were real!) The esteemed writer and occasional Stereogum contributor Hanif Abdurraqib wrote the liner notes. In a press release, Hrechdakian says:
Mark loved performing and traveling the world, but he also loved to come home and cocoon. It was our home and his studio, so there was always music happening, tape rolling, friends dropping by at all hours, lots of cooking. The lyrics speak to the hardship of being away from loved ones while the band was on tour and the joys of homecoming. There’s also this thread of space travel that runs through the album, so I imagine the cocoon as a kind of spaceship for two who leave the world and return to it.
In advance of the album, we get to hear the title track, a softly rumbling churn that takes me right back to when I first encountered this band via late-night radio broadcast. A version of “Cocoon” previously appeared on Mark Sandman’s posthumously released 2004 double CD Sandbox: The Music Of Mark Sandman. Below, check out the song’s video, which is full of archival footage.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Tomorrow”
02 “Wig”
03 “Patience”
04 “Spaceman Charm”
05 “Justine”
06 “Moons Of Jupiter”
07 “Cocoon”
08 “Pretty Face”
Cocoon is out 12/4 on Partisan.
