The Modern Lovers

Since 1970 · United States

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The Modern Lovers (1976)

The Modern Lovers strips the Velvet Underground's droning simplicity down even further, pairing a steady, motorik pulse with Jonathan Richman's plainspoken, almost childlike sincerity. "Roadrunner" rides a two-chord vamp for over four minutes, Richman's ode to driving past suburban Massachusetts radio towers turning mundane detail into genuine ecstatic feeling. Recorded years before its eventual release, the album already sounds like a blueprint other bands would spend the following decade filling in. Its steady disregard for conventional rock posturing became a direct touchstone for both American underground rock and British punk.

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The Modern Lovers

The Modern Lovers · 1976

The Modern Lovers formed in Boston around 1970, led by Jonathan Richman, an ardent, self-declared devotee of the Velvet Underground who built a sound that stripped that band's droning simplicity down further still, pairing plainspoken, often deadpan lyrics about cars, parents, and New England highways with a deliberately unpolished, almost anti-virtuosic delivery. The band's original lineup, which briefly included future Talking Heads keyboardist Jerry Harrison and future Cars drummer David Robinson, broke up before its own recordings were properly released.

The Modern Lovers (recorded 1972, released 1976) arrived as something of an artifact by the time it appeared, but its combination of VU-derived drone and unguarded, almost childlike sincerity proved enormously influential on the American underground and British punk scenes both, with the band's steady, motorik pulse and total disregard for conventional rock posturing offering a clear blueprint that groups from Galaxie 500 to the Violent Femmes have cited directly as foundational listening.