A1 See No Evil 3:56
A2 Venus 3:48
A3 Friction 4:43
A4 Marquee Moon 9:58
B1 Elevation 5:08
B2 Guiding Light 5:36
B3 Prove It 5:04
B4 Torn Curtain 7:00
The critically acclaimed debut album from New York legends Television! The album features the singles "See No Evil", "Venus" and "Marquee Moon".
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 and 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.
New York's 1970s punk was markedly different to that of Britain. Rather than reject the past, American groups deconstructed it's forms and rebuilt them with recourse to the music's strengths.