Tom Verlaine – Words From The Front

 

Tom Verlaine – Words From The Front

By

Jesse E. Mullen

You were the leader of a seminal post-punk band. You played at CBGB’s in New York, sitting in with Patti Smith’s band. And then a familiar rock ‘n’ roll cliché takes over – the band breaks up and you are suddenly flying solo.

So was the story of Tom Verlaine in 1978. He had formed the band Television in 1973 along with second guitarist Richard Lloyd, quickly developing a telepathic guitar chemistry. Their dueling leads would inspire many guitarists in the future, including Dean Wareham and Sean Eden of Luna.

Television went onto record two records, 1977’s masterwork Marquee Moon, and the underrated Adventure in 1978. (A record deserving of its own article at a later date.) But by the end of the year, the band was no more. According to insiders, they had simply run out of steam and did not want to repeat themselves.

So, Verlaine and Lloyd launched solo careers. 1979 saw the solo debuts of both men, Lloyd with the album Alchemy and Verlaine with the eponymous Tom Verlaine. Lloyd’s album was more of a traditional rock affair with new wave touches, while Verlaine wrapped the spastic guitar textures of Television around poppier song structures.

The track “Kingdom Come” would attract attention the next year when David Bowie covered it on 1980’s Scary Monsters. Verlaine further embraced the art pop sound on 1981’s Dreamtime, particularly on “Penetration.” Skittering drums and a grooving bassline – played by Verlaine – fight against wiry guitars.

Verlaine seemed to be at an artistic peak. So, when he quickly followed up with another album – 1982’s Words From The Front – fans had to wonder whether he would continue to grow or if we had already seen the best of Tom Verlaine. So how does it stack up against his rich history?

Things get off to a shaky start with the robotic, monotonous new wave/glam hybrid “Present Arrived.” Verlaine repeats the title several times in his signature yelp-y voice. Only this time it comes across more tedious than energized. It’s saving grace is the way the musicians lock into the repetition.

Verlaine’s guitars are strong, and Joe Vasta’s bass forms a hypnotic groove with Thomas Price’s drums. Another positive factor is that it is the weakest track on the album. Verlaine continues to explore and experiment, but things only get better from here.

“Present Arrived” leads into the stark, gently reverberated wonder of “Postcard From Waterloo.” It is the first of two songs to use war and soldiers on the frontline as a metaphor for Verlaine’s experiences with romance. The lyrics describe a soldier departing for battle, leaving his girlfriend behind. She attempts to break the tension by saying he will “like the view.”

It is just as poignant musically as it is lyrically. From a production standpoint, the track uses a live-in-the-studio sound, with very minimal overdubs – a piano accenting the verses, backing vocals by Lene Lovich in the chorus. Verlaine favors a twin-guitar attack – one with an untreated, single-coil pickup sound and another with a thicker digital delayed sound.

Speaking of guitars, this was the first album where Verlaine collaborated with Jimmy Ripp. Ripp would go onto become in an important figure in Verlaine’s career – as well as the music scene in general – up to the present. He would play guitar on one of Mick Jagger’s solo albums (1993’s Wandering Spirit) and later join Television outright after the departure of Richard Lloyd in 2007.

The title track is the darker side of the “war songs” coin. “Words From The Front” is written in the style of a letter home from a shellshocked soldier. Verlaine’s lyrics read like the screenplay to a movie. A member of the narrator’s unit has recently died from his battle wounds – the surgeon operating on him was numbing his own psychic pain with alcohol.

Musically, the song is a slow dirge with Verlaine’s squealing solos filling in gaps left in the words. The entire production is so evocative of the horrors of war that it is hard to believe it wasn’t written to be on a film soundtrack.

But album closer “Days On The Mountain” is something else entirely. A nine-minute epic, it starts out with spooky Moog synthesizers and a steady rhythm track behind it before Verlaine’s voice enters. Verlaine’s single-coiled guitar starts playing elaborate figures before it swells into a chorus of harmonics. The expressive playing is accompanied by Verlaine repeating the phrase “dancing again.”

About halfway through, a bass figure enters and the track changes, becoming much more synthesizer based. Verlaine’s lyrics are ever cryptic, calling back to the “days on the mountain [he] remember(s) so well.” The sound is almost evocative of krautrock bands such as Can and Tangerine Dream. A strange classic.

When Words From The Front was first released, reviews were mixed. UK imprint Melody Maker painted Verlaine as an artist past his prime. But history has been much kinder to the album. It may take a track or two to get going, but once it does, the album equals anything Verlaine has done before or since.

Warner Bros/1982