Morphine - Like Swimming
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Music CD Cover
Artist: MorphineEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1997-03-11
Music Label: Dreamworks
Soundtracks:
- Lilah (Instr.)
- Potion
- I Know You (Pt. III)
- Early To Bed
- Wishing Well
- Like Swimming
- Murder For The Money
- French Fries w/ Pepper
- Empty Box
- Eleven O' Clock
- Hanging On A Curtain
- Swing It Low
Free Music Notes for Like Swimming
Free Music Review: A Weak Effort
Hit: 2 Stars
While this album has a few really strong songs (i.e. "I Know You," "Wishing Well," "Murder for the Money") the majority of the songs on this record are not so great. I am a huge Morphine fan and probably saw them play live at least 20 times. My biggest beef with "Like Swimming" is that it contains many songs that they had played live for YEARS and which never made it onto their previous albums. Mark Sandman even made fun of a few of these songs ("11 O'Clock," "Empty Box," "French Fries With Pepper") in his onstage intros...perhaps because of their painfully bad lyrics. The overwrought production SCREAMS "We are on a 'Major Label' now" and seems to strongly contradict the "lo-fi" sound they so carefully cultivated on their first three albums. Drum loops and samples, long meandering intros, badly-chorused backing vocals, really cheezy synths...All these studio tricks seem to be an attempt to cover up a bunch of half-songs.
While I don't loathe this album the way many of my fellow Morphine fans do (trust me...they are out there...they just don't post reviews on Amazon), "Like Swimming" is the staggering disappointment in their catalog simply because there is plenty of evidence that Morphine were capable of so much more with every other album they released.
Like Swimming Poster
Morphine's music, which connects with listeners on a very physical level, is so simple it's amazing no one's done it before. Using exclusively low-register instruments, Mark Sandman's two-string bass and baritone voice, and Dana Colley's bass and baritone saxophones, the band's songs actually reverberate in the chest, treating listeners to a low-impact massage. And anything that feels this good can't be bad.But Morphine's blessing--that distinctive low rock sound--is also their curse. Not only do they bind themselves to an instantly recognizable sound, but they also limit themselves in their arrangements: Voice and sax can each hit only one note at a time (though Colley sometimes manages to honk two saxes at once), while the bass can manage a two-note interval at best. It's hard being dynamic using only three or four sounds.
So where does that leave Like Swimming, Morphine's fourth album (and first since signing on with the big boys at DreamWorks)? Pretty much where the band started, it seems--with a blessing and a curse. As with past records, Like Swimming is easy to appreciate, full of loping bass lines and slithery sax riffs that strut through jazzy rock numbers like "Wishing Well" and "Empty Box." But while newcomers may be happy with the band's warm swing, others will pine for the first time they heard the band's earlier breakthrough on Cure For Pain. Only with the album closer "Swing It Low" (a title that could be a band manifesto) does Morphine hint at changes to come: With guitar, keyboards, programmed drums, and no saxophone, the song (first released as a Sandman solo project) proves it possible to capture Morphine's noir moods in midrange as well. --Roni Sarig
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