Brian Setzer, Morphine and Noir by Ryan White of the Oregonian

Darkness descends. Wind whips rain against the neon lit window of the bar. In the darkened back corner, past the faces lining the bar -- drunks familiar and new -- Sam sits, waiting. His eyes dart from his beer to the front door, back to the beer, back to the door. He slouches forward. The right side of his jacket hangs heavier than the left. The .44 in his right pocket. The front door opens.

That's noir. Not particularly good noir, but it's noir(ish). It's dark and dangerous. It has shadows and bad intentions. It could use a dame and a couple of cops lousy with corruption and the drink should probably be Scotch, but it's a start.

Brian Setzer has a new record out. It's a noir record called "Songs From Lonely Avenue," and if you're going to advertise the record you made as a noir record, that's a great album title. He sat down with the Associated Press to talk about it.

A big fan of Robert Mitchum, James Cagney and Alfred Hitchcock, Setzer gave his new CD a story line, just like those downbeat, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and '50s where the antihero is double-crossed by a femme fatale. The result is the Brian Setzer Orchestra's "Songs From Lonely Avenue," which Surfdog Records releases Tuesday in formats that include vinyl and digital download.

"I love all those movies. And the soundtracks are just so great from those movies," Setzer said during a recent interview in his Minneapolis loft. "They've got a lot of drama to them. It's real cinema. It's just hip and cool."

They do. There's something missing from the record, however. It's too bright. It sounds like the sun's shining down on the tourists at Disney's Noirland. The AP, again.

He casually strummed minor chords on his gleaming guitar as he explained another song, "Trouble Train," which opens "Songs From Lonely Avenue" on a foreboding note with a frenzied roar of drums, guitar and horns.

Frenzied, yes. Cool? Of course. Brian Setzer's got cool to spare. Foreboding? 

Singer Mark Sandman coined the phrase "low rock" to describe the sonorous, languid groove he created with the acclaimed Boston band Morphine. Sadly, the band's time together was cut short in 1999 when Sandman suffered a heart attack in Italy while onstage with Morphine and died on the way to the hospital. A decade later, Rhino pays tribute to Sandman’s ferocious creativity and Morphine’s instantly recognizable sound with a two-disc collection of unreleased studio tracks, alternate takes, and live performances.

  

AT YOUR SERVICE is a 35-song compilation taking its name from the line Sandman used to kick off most shows, "We are Morphine at your service.” The music spans the group's entire career and features founding member Dana Colley (saxophone), original drummer Jerome Deupree and his successor, Billy Conway. To commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Sandman's passing, the surviving members will play a memorial concert in Pacific Park in Cambridge on September 27.

  

AT YOUR SERVICE is the result of the group's habit of recording everything. In fact, Conway estimates there are at least 60 unreleased Morphine songs, including those featured in this set. The first disc (subtitled "Shadows") contains unreleased diamonds such as "It's Not Like That Anymore," "Women R Dogs," "Bye Bye Johnny," and "Come Along," which mixes hard-swinging jazz with a New Orleans second-line beat. Both discs include parts four and five of "I Know You," a song that began on the group's 1992 debut, GOOD, and continued on 1997's LIKE SWIMMING.

  

The final disc (subtitled "Shade") opens with a performance recorded during the tour for GOOD at WMBR-FM in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the band performed five songs, including "Claire," "Shoot 'Em Down," and "Saddest Song." 

Billy Conway, the band's second drummer, says in the liner notes of the new package, "Creating soundscapes or music that would suggest visuals was important to Mark, and when it came to lyrics, the influence of the Beats was obvious; but when I first the joined the band in 1993, he was into a lot of James Ellroy and crime fiction in general."

And that's why almost every Morphine song makes you feel like you're driving a convertible at night, way too fast, with the top down (in the rain), and with a bottle of booze and pistol on the passenger's seat.

Even the packaging of the Morphine collection is dark, the cover showing a storm building at the ocean's horizon. Disc one is titled  "Shadows." Disc two is titled  "Shade." As if there's much of a difference.

All and all, it's the perfect collection of songs as the clouds roll in and the darkness descends. And maybe it's not a fair fight, matching a rockabilly hero, a guitar-slinger of the highest quality and the inventors of "low rock," but if you're going to walk into the bar ...