Sixteen Morphine tracks, including three rarities, will be compiled and issued on February 18th as The Best of Morphine 1992-1995.

The collection was picked by the Boston trio's remaining two members, saxophonist Dana Colley and drummer Billy Conway and will be the third release by the cult favorite since frontman Mark Sandman died of a heart attack while onstage in Italy in July 1999.

Since Sandman's death, Conway and Colley have toured in an expanded ensemble as Orchestra Morphine and also recorded with Laurie Sergeant as the Twinemen, who released their self-titled debut album earlier this year. But Morphine fans have been hungry for more material, which prompted the release of the band's final studio album, The Night, in 2000 and Bootleg Detroit, a live album, later that year.

Best of offers a balanced cross-section of the band's too-short run, including three tracks from its 1992 debut Good, five songs from 1993's breakthrough Cure for Pain, four from 1995's Yes and a single entry from the 1997 odds and ends collection, B-Sides and Otherwise. Two songs -- "Jack and Tina" and "Pretty Face" -- have never before been released, and another, "Sexy Christmas Baby Mine" was only previously available as a B-side on the now out-of-print 7" single for "Cure for Pain," which had a run of only 1,000 copies. Also tacked on is a video for "Shame," filmed in Atlanta in 1994.

"Just the sound of people who have played together a lot is palpable," Conway told Rolling Stone. "Like when Los Lobos play, you could just tell those guys have played together forever. They could play a soundtrack or a Henry Mancini piece or some Seventies disco cover and it wouldn't matter -- it would sound like them, and it would be great. It's hard to achieve that voice. I think the sound of people who have played together, there's just something there, and I think Morphine had that kind of sound."

Track listing for The Best of Morphine:

Buena
Honey White
You Speak My Language
Cure for Pain
Candy
Lucky Day
I'm Free Now
Thursday
Super Sex
Whisper
Radar
You Look Like Rain
Jack and Tina
Pretty Face
Shame
Sexy Christmas Baby Mine

ANDREW DANSBY
(December 17, 2002)