The Wonder

It’s maybe disingenuous to lay the blame elsewhere, but The Wonder still sounds, a little, like the major label machine finally caught up with Tom Verlaine. The songs are still there, and the guitar playing’s still inspiring, but some of The Wonder is brushed up in the kind of gaseous MOR synth that made the eighties the decade of little fluffy clouds. This is the hardest Verlaine album to love, but you can still make a case for specific songs – the troubadour’s lament of “Stalingrad”; “Pillow” and “5 Hours From Calais” are archetypal Verlaine story-songs. In interviews at the time, Verlaine talked about making dance music, and when he promoted The Wonder, he played acoustic. He didn’t seem lost, but it does feel like he was trying to find a way out of the decade. The Wonder wasn’t quite it.