The Verlaines, based in Dunedin, New Zealand, were formed in 1981 and released their first album, with the sarcasm-dripping title Hallelujah All the Way Home, in 1985. On the one hand, their singer-songwriter Graeme Downes submitted the debut as an honors project 
in Composition; on the other hand, they were still kind of a scruffy jangle-pop guitar band linked in with fellow New Zealand acts like the Clean and the Chills. Reviews suggest their music was seen as more complex, wordy, and “fastidious” than their peers (“embracing truly classical modality in their pop sound”, to steal a phrase from All-Music), and perhaps that means Pop Rock Nation’s Brian Block should spend more time with those beginnings than his quick YouTube examinations so far. Because after a late-1990s breakup, the Verlaines reunited to produce Pot Boiler, Corporate Moronic, and Untimely Meditations (2008, 2010, 2012) … and if y’all thought that *early* Verlaines stuff counted as complex, wordy, and fastidious, than man, you should hear now-Professor Downes approach pop music now.