Television – Marquee Moon – MoFi – Hybrid SACD

Marquee Moon reaches new sonic heights on Mobile Fidelity’s hybrid SACD. Housed in mini-LP-style packaging, this numbered-edition reissue of the effort Pitchfork named the third greatest of the entire 1970s plays with excellent detail, dynamics, and clarity. The presence, emotionalism, warmth, and dimensionality of the textures alone make this audiophile release a treat for both listeners who know the record inside-out and for audiophiles embarking on Television’s incomparable journeys for perhaps the first time.

So distinctive are Television’s styles, arrangements, and chemistry that producer Andy Johns repeatedly had to ask Verlaine and company about their aesthetic. Recording in a small room at A & R Studios, a space selected due to its resemblance to what the band used to rehearse, Johns initially recoiled from the retro setup complete with an all-tube board. Johns also misread Television’s desire for a dry sound at odds with the big, meaty acoustic that carried the day. He spent a day working on the drum kit to engineer effects in line with those he’d achieved with Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. Only to tear it apart once Television expressed a desire for a basic, reverb-free perspective.

You can hear that direct, focused, straight-line sound like never before on disc here, and how it illustrates the clean contours, tones, and shapes of every note committed to tape. And how it relates to the relatively minimal overdubs (piano, vocals) the band laid down after barely a week of main sessions with Johns, whose fanciest implementation involved swinging a vintage microphone like a lasso over his head as Lloyd double-tracked the solo to “Elevation.”

Johns returned a few months later to mix. By that point, his take on Marquee Moon had shifted from arms-length curiosity to wholesale adoration. His change of heart is easy to understand. It would dovetail with the opinions of nearly everyone who spent time with the strange, beautiful, seemingly contradictory record shortly after it hit in early 1977. Few albums of that era — as well as any before or since — combine such high-wire technical prowess, back-to-basics architecture, jam-band improvisation, narrative mysticism, delicate finesse, hook-laden catchiness, and excess-free exploration.

Another principal reason Marquee Moon remains distinctive? Verlaine’s playing and lyrics, sure, but also his interests and background. Unlike archetypal guitar heroes, let alone first-wave punk practitioners, he first fell in love with classical music before gravitating to jazz and the saxophone. Having changed his last name to honor that of the 19th century French poet, Verlaine prized responsiveness and intricacy over density, speed, and volume. He recognized that fills, harmonics, and accents allowed for as many if not more opportunities for communicative colors and commentaries as solos do.

Verlaine’s incisive ingenuity, discipline, and feel emerge throughout Marquee Moon, and are part and parcel of the impressionistic six-string dialogues with Lloyd. Their push-and-pull subverts expectations and creates new, hard-to-decipher languages strung together with vocabularies comprised of wondrous melodies, modes, bridges, scales, vamps, and tunings. Lloyd would aptly describe the duo’s results as analogous to putting together pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. The pair’s exploratory vision and economical nature further accounts for why Marquee Moon defies age and trends.

As do the hands-off, syncopated rhythms generated by bassist Fred Smith and jazz-based drummer Billy Ficca. Akin to their mates, each are dialed-in from the extended period of woodshedding Television enjoyed before hitting the studio. Together, the four members achieve blends of virtuosic tightness, chromatism, expressionism, and moodiness that exist in gray areas between garage rock, punk, prog, and free-jazz disciplines. No wonder Marquee Moon proved a major influence on the new wave, experimental rock, art pop, and so-called “alt rock” subgenres that followed.

Allergic to bombast, repetition, and convention, all eight songs function as individual highlight reels that simultaneously feed an inter-related, organic whole. And yet everything revolves around the epic title track, Ranked by Rolling Stone as the 173rd Greatest Song of All Time, it’s distinguished by a a double-stop guitar intro, dramatic jam section, and a climactic coda that encapsulates what makes Television unique — and Marquee Moon a landmark of conception, composition, and execution.

To quote Verlaine on “Prove It,” those are “just the facts.”