The Who’s not on first with “Endless Wire”
THE CD: “Endless Wire”
THE PERFORMER: The Who
YOU’LL LIKE IT IF…: the only thing you trash these days is junk mail from AARP.
WEBSITE: Click here.
“Endless Wire,” the Who’s first studio album since 1982’s “It’s Hard” marks a few odd milestones. Not musically.
Guitarist and maestro Pete Townshend crafts 21 fine tracks, including an 11-song “mini-opera” titled “Wire and Glass.” Good but not great. “EW” treads the same narrative, big-sound path that Townshend forged in 1969 with the rock opera “Tommy” and nursed to maturity with the universally adored “Who’s Next” in 1971 and “Quadrophenia” two years later.
“EW” slowly opens its aged eyes with a dreamy, dancing synth ripped from “Baba O’Riley” (a k a “Teenage Wasteland”) and slightly tweaked. The song, “Fragments,” traipses into existential choruses of “Are we breathing out/Are we breathing in…We are all tiny pieces.”
And so the surviving Who — Townshend and singer Roger Daltry — journey through a host of stadium pounders a little heavy on the Meatloaf and a handful of introspective acoustic numbers a la “The Who By Numbers.”
They mine several jewels along the way. “In the Ether” nicely taps the smoky jazz of Tom Waits. “You Stand By Me” is a sweet but all-too-short ballad of people sticking it out — clichéd but well done. “Tea and Theatre” plays up the mellow lives of rock stars deep in the twilight of their career. This last closes out “Wire and Glass,” the rise-and-fall story of a band. We wonder — could it be autobiographical?
Probably not. After 40 years, the Who still tour and have enough legend stored in their rock bank accounts to do whatever they please, forever. No matter how bad. Three cheers for “Endless Wire” sparing us intense loads of crap, by the way. One song sticks out. “We Got a Hit” cooks up the same stale corn “Rent” harvested 10 years ago. Other songs fall short, but not this painfully.
Enough about the music. “EW” makes a significant divot in the Who timeline. This is only the THIRD album since drummer and resident madman Keith Moon died in 1978 and the first since the hard-charging and influential bassist John Entwistle passed on in 2002. Since “It’s Hard,” the band broke up twice and the members trawled various personal and professional waters.
“EW” plays like a time-lapse film. Every day since 1982 flashes past. Townshend, 61, and Daltry, 62, shoulder remnants of their youth and energy. But years hang on their gravelly voices. They sanded the edges off their new songs. The young man’s revolution bows out to dismay and reflection right before our ears.
Many older artists dusted off the sound board this year. The Kinks’ Ray Davies recorded his first solo album ever; Jerry Lee Lewis shot back after ten years of obscurity and Bob Dylan galloped into town after a half-decade. On Nov. 14, Cat Stevens - now known as Yusef Islam — spins out his first fresh release since 1978.
With “Endless Wire,” the Who fallshort of baring the best of this year’s veteran fruit, but they score with one of the the more interesting.
Available at all local record stores.
– by Morgan Kelly
