Among the most influential records from the 1970s, the album has also been cited by critics as a cornerstone of alternative rock. It heavily influenced the indie rock movement of the 1980s, while post-punk acts appropriated the album's uncluttered production, introspective tone, and meticulously performed instrumentation. Hunter Felt from "PopMatters" attributed "Marquee Moon"s influence on post-punk and new wave acts to the precisely syncopated rhythm section of Fred Smith and Billy Ficca. He recommended 2003's "definitive" reissue of the album to listeners of garage rock revival bands, who he said had modeled themselves after Verlaine's Romantic poetry-inspired lyrics and the "jaded yet somehow impassioned cynicism" of his vocals. According to Sputnikmusic's Adam Downer, Television introduced an unprecedented style of rock and roll on "Marquee Moon" that inaugurated post-punk music, while "The Guardian" said it scaled "amazing new heights of sophistication and intensity" as a "gorgeous, ringing beacon of post-punk" despite being released several months before the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind the Bollocks" (1977). Erlewine, writing for AllMusic, believed the record was innovative for abandoning previous New York punk albums' swing and groove sensibilities in favor of an intellectually stimulating scope that Television achieved instrumentally rather than lyrically. He claimed "it's impossible to imagine post-punk soundscapes" without "Marquee Moon". Fletcher argued that the songs' lack of compression, groove, and extra effects provided "a blueprint for a form of chromatic, rather than rhythmic, music that would later come to be called angular".