Search - Television :: Adventure

Tom Verlaine

G. B. Ott | Wilmington / Ithaca | 07/07/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Tom Verlaine's guitar has a unique voice. Either you love it - or you don't - Typically, big fans of groups like Styx, Toto, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Boston, Kansas and The Doobies... might not appreciate Verlaine's voicing and style. It's just off the radar enough to miss major classic rock radio play... you are more likely to hear Verlaine on a college radio station.



Adventure is my favorite Television album -Marquee Moon may be better - but I just like "The Fire" too much to knock this one down. The soloing is brilliant and the mood of the songs are laced with anticiaption that fully delivers.



I would especially recommend this album to a guitarist who is searching for a unique and brilliant sound.



If you do not like this music, it is strongly recommended that you buy a buick, grow a horrible mustache and start selling Amway products."

Maybe it's just as the critics have said

mianfei | 09/24/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Television were a breath of fresh air in the 1970s with their unique psychedelic rock, sparse but based on long, yet always melodic and even delicately soft guitar lines - producing melody even through chaos.



"Adventure", their second album following the massively-acclaimed Marquee Moon, was highly accessible due to the slick production and absence of extended jams. Nonetheless, the rapid tightening of commercial radio formats and the ineptitude of noncommercial radio restricted Television to the tiniest cult audience in their homeland, although "Adventure" made them stars in Western Europe.



Compared with the deceptively soft sound of Marquee Moon, "Adventure" lost out in terms of the unique textures due to the rather intrusive production, which verged on pompous on the disappointing "Ain't That Nothin" and blunted the edge from the guitar lines of "Glory", which is largely carried by a touching vocal. However, "Carried Away" moved the clanging guitar sounds to piano and organ with surprising effect, and the largely instrumental closer "The Dream's Dream" blend's the undeniable guitar talents of Verlaine and Lloyd with a sound that was remarkably rich and soft for a time when stripped-down aggression or bombastic stadium rock was the order of the day.



The almost insanely catchy "Foxhole", their third and last European hit single, however, was the stunner here, with perhaps the finest guitar work ever made coming from Richard Lloyd. Especially in his closing solo, Lloyd played with a skill that even the radio-oriented production utterly failed to thwart. Verlaine's lyrics can appear to be shallow or intelligent (sometimes at the same time) but the music of "Foxhole" will never leave you: probably, in fact, the best song of the late 1970s.



"Careful" sounded like a radio-ready pop song, but in a good kind of way: Verlaine's gift was his knowledge of human aspiration. "The Fire", an appropriate description of a summer heatwave, expresses the opposite feeling.



Really, "Adventure" carries on the sound of Marquee Moon in a more heavily produced manner: the psychedelic sparks are still there, but are not always easy to hear - just as critics have always been saying."