They don't wield guitars, loop samples or churn out the phat beats. And they aren't a swing band, either. Yet the Boston-based trio Morphine can pack a venue full of twenty-something hipsters like a regular Fatboy Shady. That they evade the trappings of pop culture stardom is, in fact, a large part of their charm.

The players themselves look the outsider part. Singer/two-string slide bass player Mark Sandman, with his sallow eyes and bushy, unkempt hair, resembles a freaky but friendly next-door neighbor. Saxophonist Dana Colley looks like a bartender straight out of Swingers, and drummer Billy Conway is the kooky-brilliant math professor.

As a frontman, Sandman commands the stage with a goofy aloofness that matches his lyrical playing style. While his band treated the audience to a two-and-a-half hour, twenty-song set of sultry, bass-driven lounge bliss, Sandman entertained the crowd with a warmly cocky attitude that managed to mock the entire institution of rock stardom.

"Before I learned to play the two-string bass, I learned how to play the no-string bass," Sandman quipped as he gyrated and posed with his ax in true glam-rock form. Later, "French Fries With Pepper," from 1997's Like Swimming, gave Sandman an opportunity to use the timeworn call-and-response gambit. The crowd was only too eager to participate. Similarly, when crowd-members screamed their requests, Sandman shook them off like a pitcher receiving the wrong sign from his catcher. "I know the batter," he cracked. "I'm throwing a forkball."

Dishing out crowd favorites such as "Candy," "Buena" and "You Look Like Rain," Morphine also test-drove new numbers from their upcoming fall release. Original band skinsman Jerome Deupree, looking like he just walked off the New York stock exchange, was brought back to spice up percussion in new songs such as "Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer," "A Good Woman is Hard to Find" and the Middle Eastern-influenced "Rope On Fire." Not to be outdone, Colley responded by pulling out his ominous five-foot-tall bass saxophone -- or as Sandman called it, the "big boy" -- for the heavy dredging of "Slow #'s."

The band plowed through the remainder of their set of brooding, droning flotsam with keen skill, especially on "Eleven O'Clock," "Thursday" and "Mary Won't You Call My Name?" Sandman added some additional humor with his poem, "Why Can't It Be Like the Old Days," suggesting that maybe we'd be better off living in caves. It was a theme this uncompromising band and its loyal fans could easily embrace.

JONAH FREEDMAN
(April 9, 1999)