Television
Marquee Moon

THE REVIEW

You see them on the cover with fixed gazes, posing in front of a photo booth background, and you really think that in that snapshot from the past, they demand something from us: the need to be heard.

New York in the mid '70s becomes the ideal center for music studied as an outlet for generational discontent, and the Television becomes one of the main attractions in the CBGB's underground area, witnesses to musical ferment destined to expand their expressive horizons.

The dawn of the New Wave coincides with the release of fundamental albums for the course of Rock music, and in such a dense, overwhelming, revolutionary year as '77, 'Marquee Moon' couldn't be missing, a document of extraordinary electric vitality aimed at exorcising the anxieties that trouble its leader, whose name is Tom Verlaine. Built on brazen rhythms, clear melodies, obsessive guitar arpeggios, and subtle vocals, the songs of Marquee Moon possess such uncontrolled charm expressed in this phrase: few resources but many ideas.

Following Verlaine's paths can be quite tortuous, but we cannot do without the immediate breakdowns of "See no evil" and "Venus" or the chilling energy of "Friction"; only after does the adventure of the Lunar Pavilion become more epic with over 10 minutes of the title track (the central jam of the track is thrilling), and with the inconsistent laments of "Elevation." How can one resist the poignant delicacy of "Guiding light" and that solo infused with so much romance? A cheerful walk in the night of "Prove it" is just what is needed, before the partial daze of "Torn curtain," evidenced by a dramatic crescendo followed by Verlaine's tireless "screaming" guitar.

Thus ends a forward-looking record for compositional and stylistic ideas, anything but dated and ready to be rediscovered after part of the modern Indie-Rock, with the complicity of some new generation groups, has drawn heavily from it.