Cocoon

Pre-Order Item. Release Date Subject to Change.
Label: Partisan Records
Release Date: 4th December

Morphine find themselves in 2026 as a band with a longtail of influence on today's sound as their unique low-rock, which pulled in post punk, gothic country with a film noir saxophone jazz, finds new cast of cheerleaders as they confess to copying their homework. 'Cocoon' arrives 30 years after being shelved by frontman Mark Sandman and now the great lost album he never quite revisited before his untimely death gets a reissuing.

At the height of grunge, Morphine sounded like nobody else. The Boston trio built their own strange, seductive musical language (coined "low rock" by frontman Mark Sandman), built around Sandman's two-string slide bass and unmistakable voice, Dana Colley’s baritone & tenor saxophone, and stripped-back drums (Jerome Deupree, Billy Conway). Morphine became one of the defining cult bands of the ’90s, but their story came to an abrupt end in 1999, when Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage during a concert in Italy.

More than 25 years later, Cocoon offers an extraordinary final chapter. Its eight songs were recorded during Morphine’s late-’90s sessions before Sandman ultimately shelved the material on the path toward what would become their final album. Rediscovered in the band’s archives decades later, Sandman’s life partner and Morphine estate manager Sabine Hrechdakian and producer Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies) transferred the original tapes and carefully assembled this unified collection of Morphine songs. Dana Colley returned to add new saxophone parts, and Kolderie then brought new mixes to the table. Rather than a collection of demos or outtakes, Cocoon is a fully realized Morphine album revealing a band still pushing forward that somehow waited nearly three decades to find its way into the world.