If Tom Verlaine’s flip, strained voice was ever your stumbling block, then Warm & Cool is the album for you. It’s his first fully instrumental collection, and coming after the curate’s egg of 1990’s The Wonder, it suggested another way that Verlaine could stumble forward into a new decade. He’s a canny enough artist to know that an album of truncated solos would feel half-baked; on Warm & Cool, consistency of mood outpaces flights of fancy. There are two modes here, mostly – paced, simple melodies for trio, where Verlaine ruminates over simple chord changes; and more abstract, textural explorations, where Billy Ficca’s drums roll in like storm clouds, as Verlaine directs weather systems with the flick of his wrist. Both are sublime.