Morphine Thrives at El Rey Despite Some Difficulties

How you handle yourself when things go wrong is sometimes even more important than how you cope with smooth sailing. The technical problems (stemming from a malfunctioning bass amp) that afflicted Morphine’s show at the El Rey Theatre on Saturday night actually brought out the best in the Boston trio; despite repeated delays and constantly hovering roadies, the band remained resolutely focused on the task at hand.

Singer-bassist Mark Sandman is a keenly charismatic frontman, and he negotiated the snags with smoldering wit--joking about temperamental equipment and referring to the set as “Semi-Unplugged in L.A.” In the end, the stop-and-go progress only slightly impeded Morphine’s momentum, and the group eventually worked its way up to a rousing seven-song encore.

Morphine’s store of sultry, swaggering compositions is a striking combination of rock, jazz and R&B--the; dramatic results of Dana Colley’s vivacious saxophone, Billy Conway’s forceful drumming plus Sandman’s two-string slide bass (his own invention) and the shadowy noir tales he spins in his lusciously husky baritone.

Saturday night’s set ran the gamut from quasi-spoken word interludes (a wry story about a girl named Mona) to simmering jams and fairly straightforward pop interludes such as “Cure for Pain.” Yet as heady as the tunes were, it was ultimately the down-to-earth aesthetic values underpinning them--sharp songwriting, impeccable musicianship--that made them memorable and kept Morphine on track through all the evening’s rough spots.