Sometime in 1986, Tom Verlaine headed into the studio with producer Dave Bascombe to record a new album. That set of songs was rejected by his label – a puzzle, when it included some of his strongest songs yet (“Sixteen Tulips”, the original “One Time At Sundown”). He subsequent returned to the studio with some new songs and recorded Flash Light, an album rich with stormy, tangled guitar, and a new, scabrous energy, as you can hear on songs like “Cry Mercy Judge” and “Bomb.” But the material here is most beautiful when the thickets of guitar part slightly, and allow Verlaine’s curious melodies to drift through, as with “Song,” the mournful synths of “The Scientist Writes A Letter,” and “Sundown.”