The Ottawa Citizen on Endless Wire

[Brian Cady]

via the Edmonton Journal
http://tinyurl.com/ymcnj3

The Who's latest album has an oddly unfinished feel
Lynn Saxberg, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
ENDLESS WIRE
Artist: The Who
Label: Universal

Rating: 3 (out of 5)
- - -
Most ordinary rock fans gave up on The Who years ago. While their early contributions to the lexicon of rock have always been lauded, hopes of hearing new material from the legendary British rockers petered out more than a decade ago.

After the 1978 death of drummer Keith Moon, more bad news than good seemed to emanate from the Who camp. In recent years, for example, we heard that guitarist/songwriter Pete Towns-hend was going deaf. He got mixed up in an international child-porn investigation (and was eventually cleared). And in 2002 the band lost its bass player, John Entwistle.

But fast-forward to 2006, a new configuration of the band formed around Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey, and a triumphant North American tour that indicated The Who still had the potential for rock supremacy.

Their Oct. 6 concert at Rexall Place featured new songs in the setlist.

Finally. After almost 24 years, a new album of Who material will be in stores today, the first since 1982's It's Hard. The disc is called Endless Wire (with no sign of apologies to Gordon Lightfoot, whose 1978 LP carries the same title).

It's billed as The Who, and features Daltrey on vocals, but Endless Wire feels more like a meaty Pete Townshend project than a rough-and-tumble Who set. Lyrically, the band's creative genius tackles some of his pet topics, including spirituality, sanity, science and the power of music to soothe or celebrate.

At first glance the 19 tracks seem to require a serious commitment of time, though some tracks are only a minute or so, and the total runtime is less than an hour. It's a little more manageable if you know the breakdown: the first nine were written for The Who; the remaining 10 make up Wire & Glass, a mini-opera based on Townshend's novella The Boy Who Heard Music (which can be found at www.pete townshend.co.uk).

Overall, Endless Wire is a tamer, more acoustic-oriented affair than one might expect from The Who of old. The opening track, Fragments, begins with a delicate take on the grand keyboard motif from Baba O'Riley. But instead of raging about a teenage wasteland, the "breathing-in/breathing-out" chorus serves as a declaration the band is alive and well.

When the fury comes, it comes quietly. No squalls of feedback punctuate Man In a Purple Dress, but the sentiment in the line, "how dare you be the one to assess me," sounds like a personal cry from Townshend, who faced public judgment until he was cleared of the child-porn allegations.

Another strong song came out of that dark period. In the notes Townshend wrote to accompany the album, he says he penned You Stand By Me for his girlfriend, Rachel Fuller, and that it also applies to his relationship with Daltrey. A fluttery acoustic-guitar number, it's a good start for a song, but at just 96 seconds, it seems unfinished.

This is a recurring problem. The mini-opera launches on a bombastic high with an 81-second rocker, Sound Round, followed by the catchy, 88-second Pick Up The Peace. Unholy Trinity and Trilby's Piano fill in some background on the main characters -- a trio of teenagers who form a band -- before there's another distraction: a plan for a computerized music program that will unify mankind. Or something like that.

Whether or not you follow the story, the music is well-produced, well-played and listenable, with enough lyrical substance to provide hours of deciphering amusement. The main drawback is the choppy pace -- too many songs appear in fragments, as if more time was spent on concept and execution than actual songwriting.

The Ottawa Citizen

 
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com


 
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