Some bands make great albums, and some make great mixtapes. Though I've never had reason to compile a Morphine mix, they'd probably be a better candidate for it than most. Because if they do fall under the "great album" category, it's strictly in the singular tense, as applied to their 1993 sophomore release, Cure for Pain. By their third album, 1995's Yes, they'd already perfected their unique sound, and subsequent releases proved there wasn't much territory left to be charted.

Though I still stand by 1997's Like Swimming as an underrated gem, there's really only about one album's worth of great songs spread across the last three LPs that would fully measure up to Cure for Pain. So it was a bittersweet resolution to the band's career when frontman Mark Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack last year, leaving behind their weakest and most misunderstood effort yet, The Night.

In a short lifetime of missed opportunities and foolish hesitations, Morphine stands as my crown jewel of concerts never seen. On countless occasions, I'd see their name on a downtown marquee but was either too young to attend, or simply decided against it. The last time around, I neglected to buy advance tickets for the sold-out show that turned out to be their last in the area. This might be why Sandman's death hit me so much harder than that of any other musician in recent memory: regret. Since then, the Orchestra Morphine revival has traveled through a few times, but I just haven't had the heart to check them out. So Bootleg: Detroit is a wonderful treat for both sad cases such as myself and those who frequently enjoyed Morphine in their true element: on the stage.

Bootleg: Detroit was already on the release schedule at the time of Sandman's death, and it's been repeatedly pushed back for more than a year. But it doesn't seem like as much an attempt on Ryko's part to cash in on the man's passing as much as yet another opportunity to cash in on Morphine in general, like with 1997's B-Sides and Otherwise, a compilation released after the band was signed away by Dreamworks. Nonetheless, a live document makes a more fitting eulogy for Sandman the Consummate Showman than the fussy, uneven The Night. Best of all is the fact that the show itself is pulled from the 1994 tour in support of Cure for Pain, capturing the trio in their prime, before it all began to wear thin.

Even the dubious choice to make an official live album out of a lo-fi audience recording proves a good one. A little added echo goes a long way for Morphine's spare sound, and fills in the blanks far better than a crystal clear soundboard recording ever could. Sandman's slide bass swirls around, taking up the center of the sound and allowing his sly baritone to waft just slightly above it. Billy Conway's tom-toms and bass drum join in the low-end overload while his snare and cymbals snap tightly in the higher registers. And on "Head with Wings," the reverb launches into the stratosphere at all the right moments, bending notes and throwing off equilibriums. Even the occasional feedback works to the band's advantage, ringing in tune with Dana Colley's floating sax lines.

Bootleg: Detroit begins, interestingly enough, with a funky reworking of the reggae standard "Come Along," kicking things off with the braying honk of Colley's baritone sax. After that unexpected but effective opener, they tear into a block of songs named after women, playing "Mary Won't You Call My Name?," "Candy Says," "Sheila," and "Claire" all in a row. But even the cutesy theme behind the setlist works, if only because they're all top-notch songs.

Over the course of the evening, Morphine work themselves into quite a groove. Things arrive at the closest the low-rockers ever got to a frenzy with the noisy one-two punch of "You Speak My Language" and "Thursday." Once the air clears, they make time for just one of their slow, smoky swing numbers, "You Look Like Rain." The set ends appropriately with perhaps the definitive Morphine song, "Buena."

As usual, my main gripe lies with the editing done to the recording. Bootleg: Detroit clocks in at a brief 40 minutes, which, to be fair, is about the average length of a Morphine studio album. But why so stingy? If the band had left the stage after that length of time, the audience would have undoubtedly felt cheated. And I can't help but find the sudden, enthusiastic applause that immediately follows a performance of the oddball b-side, "My Brain," a little conspicuous. Still, this leaves no room for the record to wear out its welcome, and it covers most of the essential songs from the band's early catalog. The deal is also sweetened by the Enhanced-CD Quicktime videos of a 1995 performance of "Cure for Pain" and a unique, dancy rendition of "The Saddest Song."

So far, in my brief tenure at Pitchfork, I seem to have encountered an inordinately large number of live albums. They account for nearly a third of my reviews, in fact. But this kind of thing happens every few years, at times when the music industry is even shorter on ideas than usual. Nonetheless, these records have warranted some of my highest ratings, which means that the labels must be doing something right. Or at least, Morphine was.

-Al Shipley