Review Summary: "You're the night Lilah, a little girl lost in the woods"
This is one of the most unique albums I've ever heard. Morphine created a really atmospheric album, they changed their style to a darker and more minimalist music that was showed in some of their songs of their previous albums but never explored like in this one.
When you play the first track "The night", Mark Sandman's lyrics surround you and the piano, bass and saxophone turn your sunny day into a dark night. There are references to a girl callled "Lilah" which means "night" in hebrew and "born at night" in arabic. Mark Sandman's poetry is sung in three different styles: slow singing, rhythmical singing and rhytmical whispering at the end of the song. Absolutely beautiful.
Following the same style of music, we have "Souvenir" with its haunting piano, deep atmosphere, intriguing lyrics: "I remember meeting you, we were super low. Surrounded by the sounds of saxophones", at the time Sandman sings the chorus you feel like falling into a jazzy and sexy abyss, the piano and voice create an increible atmosphere. Very dark and mysterious song.
"Slow numbers" and "Like a mirror" are really slow and hypnotic songs, the former makes you feel tense and makes you feel everything slow, I don't recommend listening to this song too high because its very intense. The latter is a really weird song, deep bass, a woman singing along with Sandman and the lyrics are pure poetry, once I listened to this song while sleeping and I dreamed its surreal lyrics: a ship, a parachute, catching someone, leave you world this afternoon. One of the most surreal dreams I've ever had.
"Rope on fire" brings an eastern sound, it transport you to mystical places.
Also there are upbeat songs without changing the style of the music: "So many ways" is rhytmic and busy, "A good woman is hard to find" sounds like a hybrid of "type of negative" and straight rock music and "Top floor, bottom buzzer" is a masterpiece: a simple but catchy bassline, funky sax, great lyrics and incredible chorus helped by women's vocals. This song is about drinking, parties, women. its a really cool song.
The rest of the songs are very good too, they are a little bit jazzier, but each one sounds differently.
So, what do we have here? We have a jazzy, dark and hypnotic album, each song sounds differently but the style is the same in every song: You listen to them and know inmediately that it is morphine.
Enjoy the night.
