Tom Verlaine album cover
Tom Verlaine

Tom Verlaine

1979
Elektra

On his first album after Television broke up, Verlaine’s songs don’t stray terribly far from the template he’d established, though they feel a little easier in their delivery; without the tension of the Television line-up, Verlaine plays it relatively loose here, or at the very least, as loose as an uptight New York boy could be. David Bowie would cover “Kingdom Come” in a year’s time; later, the Blue Aeroplanes would make the Velvets chung of Television-era offcut “Breakin’ In My Heart” their own. “Yonki Time”’s surrealism has always been charming, but the magic here is in “Last Night”, where Verlaine shows he’s a dab hand at quiet melodrama. Tom Verlaine as balladeer? Weirder things have happened…

Jon Dale

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