The Night is the fifth and final studio album by the alternative rock band Morphine, released in 2000 via DreamWorks. The album expands the band's sound beyond their usual arrangements of previous albums (bass, saxophone and drums), introducing acoustic guitars, organs, strings and female backing vocals. The album peaked at No. 137 on the Billboard 200.

Production

Jerome Deupree, the band's original drummer, who had previously quit due to health problems, rejoined as a guest playing alongside Billy Conway, according to credits listed in the CD booklet, thus making The Night Morphine's first album recorded as a quartet rather than a trio. Recording sessions for the album were completed shortly before the sudden July 1999 death of bass player and lead singer Mark Sandman; Conway and saxophonist Dana Colley oversaw the final mixing process. The band spent two years working on the album in Sandman's Cambridge home studio.

Critical reception

The Pitch wrote that "it’s not a romantic exaggeration to say that this album is the trio’s most sensuous, satisfying recording, finally delivering on the diverting-but-two-dimensional original notion of what Sandman termed 'low rock' ... The Night is the first time in ages a posthumous release has made noise from beyond the grave that doesn’t sound like a cash register." Trouser Press wrote that "the tone may be dour due to the singer’s sudden death, but the music is the most fully realized and finely textured Morphine ever mustered." Exclaim! called the album "a slow, grinding burlesque that hovers tentatively between testifying to above and wallowing down below."

Track listing

All songs written by Mark Sandman.

Personnel

Adapted from the album liner notes. Morphine Additional musicians Technical

Charts