Tom Verlaine
Cover

THE REVIEW

Tom Verlaine changes, and this is the main news. In the days of Television, after the shimmering masterpiece "Marquee Moon," comparable to the level of a diamond, followed the faded copy "Adventure," more or less akin to topaz; after two twin solo albums ("Tom Verlaine" and "Dreamtime") came a third publication eager but not entirely effective ("Words From The Front"). So what to do? Stay quietly in your own space, nurturing that hard core of followers always willing to respond to the howls of the guitar, or try to surprise a little? Any intelligent person, where "intelligent" does not mean "wise," would choose the first option, and here Uncle Tom proves to be an author of the first class, an excellent guitarist, and last but not least, a person of intellect.

"Cover" was released in 1984, and the comparison with its direct predecessor comes naturally: if the 1982 album began with a photocopy of a duplicate of a reissue of his now-established style (the useless "Present Arrived") without leaving much to the imagination, here the soft tones of "Five Miles Of You" send a clear signal: I no longer wish to quench your thirst, judge me poorly if you are goats, judge me well if you are lions. The lion knows that the guitar so dear to the lovers of Mr. Miller is still where we left it, always there to generate those rhythms repeated incessantly until hypnosis, only now it’s seasoned a bit more with the midcourse 80s. The synthesizers, unrestrained rulers of the decade, sneak with stealth into Verlaine's fourth solo work and pop up like mushrooms wherever you look: "O Foolish Heart" is an ironic yet painful self-celebration, re-embracing that playful yet depressed side of the most capable post-punk New York artist, in the same way, "Let Go The Mansion" uses electronic sounds to mask a guitar until then too much in the foreground.

Play, Verlaine, and play well, there’s no doubt about it. What surprises is the ability to change while maintaining one's own identity and dignity, the transformation is masked by concrete yet not immediately evident sound coatings: after a first listen, indeed, one might think this is simply another Tom Verlaine album. After the second listen, one realizes the wrong word in the previous sentence is "simply." "Miss Emily" so distant, "Travelling" so funky, "Dissolve/Reveal" so stuck in the 80s, initially, all these do not give the impression of following any turning point signal in the cold storyteller of the Great Disillusioned Apple's sound, his singing remains the same but asking this to change is like asking Brian May to cut his hair, what stands out as innovative is the filling of cold sounds of another kind, no longer just the guitar dictating the law. The nostalgic ones can still find solace with "Rotation" (which, after "Elevation" and "Penetration," fits) while the concluding "Swing" starts with a spoken part, a result of the experiments of its predecessor, because "Words From The Front" was still a first glance towards other horizons, to end with a cheerful yet cold and melodic rhetoric on metropolitan love, which is not found in the lyrics but in the asphalt atmosphere that emanates from the slow pace of the music. Beautiful headaches, those of falling in love with one's sadness.

This is undoubtedly the most interesting Tom Verlaine album since his early days, the awareness that repeating oneself does harm and that there is always, and I mean always, a need to renew oneself to avoid boredom. A concept for intelligent people.