The Verlaines deal in moments big and small, both structurally and thematically. Graeme Downes formed the band in New Zealand in the early 1980s, where they signed to Flying Nun and quickly became an important part of the label's history. Their music subsequently went in and out of print, becoming a valuable secret shared between friends, all caught up in Downes' fascination with labyrinthian song structures, literate pop, scratchy guitar sounds, and occasional string and horn flourishes. The music made by the Verlaines is neither difficult nor accessible, instead ending up in a fuzzy middle ground where both those impulses are indulged, giving their work a strange kind of weight all of its own.
Captured Tracks is issuing Hallelujah All the Way Home, the band’s first album from 1985, and the 1987 compilation Juvenilia, as part of its broader Flying Nun reissue campaign. It's a moment of vindication for Downes, who has toiled under the Verlaines name on and off for years, while also holding down a day job as a lecturer in music at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Still, it's most likely to end up as a treat for the devoted, a reward for years of allegiance. There's even a Verlaines tote bag available for anyone buying both albums in one package—an item that fans of the Dunedin scene, after years spent trawling used record stores looking for Flying Nun artefacts, can't ever have dreamed of materializing.
"Death and the Maiden" from Juvenilia is the natural starting point for the uninitiated, with its post-Buzzcocks guitar sound, an odd stop-start section, a dreamy chorus, and a complete change of tact at the midway point. It even includes a helpful explanation of the band's name (taken from Paul Verlaine the poet, not Tom Verlaine the Television frontman). Comparisons can be drawn between this work and similarly minded musicians who circled around the Postcard scene in Scotland around this time, even if Downes wasn’t necessarily aware of them. There are shades of the post-punk awkwardness and Beefheartian rhythms of the Fire Engines, and a sense of influences stretching into soul in a manner akin to the material on Orange Juice's The Glasgow School.
What both these albums capture is the excitement of being in a band and discovering that you're onto something, even if the audience for it in the outside world isn't there yet. Juvenilia is well named— it could work as a title for either of these records—with Downes spitting out lyrics about drinking and love and alienation and hope. Over the extraordinarily lopsided rhythms of "All Laid On" he sings of dreaming despite it all, while on "The Lady and the Lizard" he needs to "just be alone all day." It's an unnervingly accurate embodiment of the conflicting emotions felt when you're still trying to make sense of the world. Or, as Downes puts it in his notes to Juvenilia, the sound of a band "desperately trying to make some noise that made life more meaningful."
A common thematic trope of both Hallelujah and Juvenilia is the way they both gallop through styles and strange deviations, being quite unafraid to take a turn into unexpected territory. Hallelujah dips into a folk lament ("Don't Send Me Away") and follows it with the furiously incisive "Lying in State". Juvenilia positively drifts into the beautiful, drumless "Wind Song", while purposefully awkward tracks such as "Angela" (from the Chris Knox-recorded Dunedin Double EP) are executed with a breathless enthusiasm. The clumsy seal on these songs, whether deliberately designed or part of a learning curve, works so well as a mirror of the teenage fumbling the lyrics address, adding to the feel of someone stumbling through life, not sure where to turn next, simultaneously perplexed and in awe of everything around them.
The Verlaines' subsequent career was suitably diverse, hitting a high on the more inward looking 1987 album Bird Dog, enduring a rocky period in the 90s, and a reformation in the 2000s. Downes' 2001 solo album Hammers and Anvils is the highlight of his later work. Fortunately his wit and skill for a quick turn of phrase never abandoned him—a 2003 compilation album of Verlaines material issued by Flying Nun was suitably named You're Just Too Obscure for Me. As that title suggests, Downes is of no doubt about his place in the world. "It was music that was on the cultural fringes when we wrote it, and it still is," he said in a recent interview. Still, his modest stories come with all-encompassing themes and the occasional grandiose notion, all beautifully hobbled by the Verlaines' wonderfully inexpert approach.
