Adventure

Adventure is unfairly treated like the bastard step-child of Marquee Moon. While, yes, it is not the unequivocal masterpiece that their debut album is, this follow-up still has much to offer. It is a very good, even great, album.

Where Marquee Moon is neurotic, angular and darkly constructed, Adventure is given more room to breathe, filled with quiet space and laid back atmospherics. There is no real difference in the songwriting, it’s still all aces and prone to Tom Verlaine’s poetic sensibilities. And the guitar work blows the rest of the CBGB’s bands out of the water. There is no one else on the level of Verlaine from that generation.

No one song is quite as genius in its sonic textures, nervous energy and carefully constructed song craft as, say, “Marquee Moon” or “See No Evil,” but “Careful” and “Foxhole” are close as one can get. They subtract the neurotic twinge for subdued avant-rock. Is this better or worse? It’s neither, and if Adventure had come first who knows what its reputation would have become.

Relative evaluation has caused many people to proclaim Television’s second album as inferior in some way, this is untrue. Their two albums are so wildly different that it’s practically impossible to compare them. Yes, Marquee Moon is the great of the two, but that doesn’t mean that Adventure has no value. Its value takes a greater investment in the listener to discover. Layers and superb playing by, arguably, one of the greatest guitar bands of all time over nine songs makes for a satisfying listen.

(The reissue reinstates the previously abandoned title track, truly one of Television’s greatest songs.) DOWNLOAD: “Careful”