MORPHINE 'COCOON' LP on Black Vinyl From Partisan Records

During grunge's peak years, Morphine sounded like nobody else. The Boston trio forged a strange, seductive language of their own — frontman Mark Sandman called it "low rock" — built on his two-string slide bass and unmistakable voice, Dana Colley's baritone & tenor saxophone, and stripped-back drums (Jerome Deupree, Billy Conway). They became one of the defining cult bands of the '90s, yet the story cut off abruptly in 1999, when Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage at a concert in Italy.

Cocoon arrives more than 25 years later as an extraordinary final chapter. Its eight songs were recorded during Morphine's late-'90s sessions before Sandman shelved the material on the way toward what became their final album. Decades on, the tapes turned up in the band's archives; Sandman's life partner and Morphine estate manager Sabine Hrechdakian and producer Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies) transferred the originals and carefully assembled this unified set of Morphine songs. Colley came back to add new saxophone parts, and Kolderie brought fresh mixes to the table. Demos or outtakes, this is not — Cocoon plays as a fully realized Morphine album, a band still pushing forward that somehow waited nearly three decades to reach the world.