"Tom Verlaine" Album Description:
I still think of Tom Verlaine as the guy who made guitars sound like they were arguing in public and somehow winning. When his solo debut "Tom Verlaine" landed in 1979 on Elektra, it didn’t feel like a “fresh new era” announcement. It felt more like he’d walked out of Television, shut the door gently, and kept the lights on in the next room. Same wiry nerves. Less band politics.
People slap “New Wave” on it because the late-70s bins need labels to sleep at night, but this one lives in that post-punk zone where melody gets edged with splinters. The songs don’t strut. They pace. “The Grip of Love” grips, alright — it grabs the sleeve by the collar and drags you into Verlaine’s headspace. “Kingdom Come” has that sly, haunted lift that later tempted David Bowie into covering it on Scary Monsters (which is basically a compliment with a sharp elbow).
The funny part: if you came here expecting the famous Verlaine/Richard Lloyd dual-guitar fencing, that’s not this record. Lloyd isn’t on it. Instead, Verlaine builds the whole thing like a narrow staircase — tight turns, hard edges, no handrail. Recorded at Blue Rock Studio in New York, and produced by Verlaine himself, it sounds like he insisted on keeping the air between the notes. Not “clean.” Just… deliberate. Like he didn’t want anyone polishing the fingerprints off.
The details are where it starts to feel human instead of historic: Television bassist Fred Smith shows up here, which makes sense because some of these tunes trace back to ideas from that world. And on “Breakin’ in My Heart” you even get Ricky Wilson from the B-52’s — a weird little cameo that shouldn’t work, but does. That track stretches out and keeps stretching, like Verlaine is refusing to let the song end politely. I respect that. I also sometimes wish he’d stop staring at me from the speakers. But that’s the point.