Tom Verlaine once complained that he'd never written about two of the strongest dreams in his life, "because it's hard to get across the language of dreams." That may be so, but Verlaine still manages to come closer to solving that problem than just about anyone else in his medium. His third solo album, Wonds from the Front, seems to depict a dream somewhere in the ether over Europe during World War I. To say that much is already subjective, for despite several craftsmanlike details in the title song (a soldier dies "beneath the surgeon's drunken hands"), Verlaine's dream is more a matter of atmosphere than specifics.

This LP sounds much like its predecessors and like Verlaine's former band, Television. There's his loopy singing, which ranges from meltingly lyrical vocals to cartoonish yelping. There's a pliant rhythm section that frames Verlaine and second guitarist Jimmy Ripp (an ex-member of Kid Creole and the Coconuts), who, like Verlaine's previous guitar partners, approximates his ringing-toned style. And then there's Verlaine's soloing: spare and effective, a few quivering notes that add up like stakes forming a path.

Verlaine melds this limited range of effects into a suite of songs that calls up his themes of war, loss and distanced love without insisting on them. The title tune and another set piece, "Postcard from Waterloo," are bound to outweigh a more familiar sampling of despair like "Coming Apart," while one of the record's more ghostly moods is evoked in "Days on the Mountain," the long closing march whose stirring guitar choruses sound like triumphant tubas on parade. To appropriate the title of Verlaine's last solo album, this whole LP seems to move in dreamtime.

As throughout his body of work, there's something so inspired yet effortless about Verlaine's songs that you have to wonder if he's writing them ... well, in his sleep. (RS 372)

FRED SCHRUERS