Television [1978] Adventure

[01] Glory
[02] Days
[03] Foxhole
[04] Careful
[05] Carried Away
[06] The Fire
[07] Ain't That Nothin'
[08] The Dream's Dream



amg: Television's groundbreaking first album, Marquee Moon, was as close to a perfect debut as any band made in the 1970s, and in many respects it would have been all but impossible for the band to top it. One senses that Television knew this, because Adventure seems designed to avoid the comparisons by focusing on a different side of the band's personality. Where Marquee Moon was direct and straightforward in its approach, with the subtleties clearly in the performance and not in the production, Adventure is a decidedly softer and less aggressive disc, and while John Jansen's production isn't intrusive, it does round off the edges of the band's sound in a way Andy Johns' work on the first album did not. But the two qualities that really made Marquee Moon so special were Tom Verlaine's songs and the way his guitar work meshed with that of Richard Lloyd, whose style was less showy but whose gifts were just as impressive, and if you have to listen a bit harder to Adventure, it doesn't take long to realize that both of those virtues are more than apparent here, and while one might wish the sound had a bit more bite on "Foxhole" or "Ain't That Nothin'," the quieter, more layered sound is just what the doctor ordered for "Glory" and "The Dream's Dream." Sure, Marquee Moon is a better album, but Adventure has one of the greatest guitar bands of all time playing superbly on a set of truly fine songs, and albums like this come along far too infrequently for anyone to ignore music this pleasurable simply on the grounds of relative evaluation; it's not quite a masterpiece, but it's a brilliant record by any yardstick.
(amg 9/10)

Television [1977] Marquee Moon

[01] See No Evil
[02] Venus
[03] Friction
[04] Marquee Moon
[05] Elevation
[06] Guiding Light
[07] Prove It
[08] Torn Curtain



amg: Marquee Moon is a revolutionary album, but it's a subtle, understated revolution. Without question, it is a guitar rock album -- it's astonishing to hear the interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd -- but it is a guitar rock album unlike any other. Where their predecessors in the New York punk scene, most notably the Velvet Underground, had fused blues structures with avant-garde flourishes, Television completely strip away any sense of swing or groove, even when they are playing standard three-chord changes. Marquee Moon is comprised entirely of tense garage rockers that spiral into heady intellectual territory, which is achieved through the group's long, interweaving instrumental sections, not through Verlaine's words. That alone made Marquee Moon a trailblazing album -- it's impossible to imagine post-punk soundscapes without it. Of course, it wouldn't have had such an impact if Verlaine hadn't written an excellent set of songs that conveyed a fractured urban mythology unlike any of his contemporaries. From the nervy opener, "See No Evil," to the majestic title track, there is simply not a bad song on the entire record. And what has kept Marquee Moon fresh over the years is how Television flesh out Verlaine's poetry into sweeping sonic epics.
(amg 10/10)