FILTER REISSUES
Marquee cha-cha
Lightning striking itself: the master’s last three, cruelly undervalued, solo albums.
By John Mulvey.
Over the Moon: Tom Verlaine gets noir-ish on his last three solo LPs; (below) the much-overlooked Songs And Other Things.
Tom Verlaine ★★★★
Warm And Cool/Around/ Songs And Other Things
REAL GONE. LP
IN 2006, Tom Verlaine told the New York Times that his life’s work was now “struggling not to have a professional career” and, by most measures, he was making a decent fist of it. In the final 31 years of his life, Verlaine released just three solo LPs and one Television reunion set, keeping his hand in with occasional Television tours and Patti Smith cameos. After his death in January 2023, it became apparent what he’d accumulated to distract him from making music: a collection of 50,000 books, sold off in a vast Brooklyn garage sale last August.