The Courier Mail (Australia) on Endless Wire

[Brian Cady]

http://tinyurl.com/yzeypl

Who's back for the believers
By Noel Mengel 
November 01, 2006 11:00pm

THEY could have called it Who Dared. Because who dared to hope, 28 years after the death of Keith Moon, 24 years after their last studio recording, four years after the death of John Entwistle, that The Who could make an album as powerful, as ambitious, as rewarding as this?

Not me, and I've been Who-obsessed since 1966.

With Endless Wire, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey don't hide from their history. They chest up to it. Roger swings his microphone around it. Pete windmills his arm at it. Then they embrace it. Then they explode through it.

From the opening moments – an oscillating synthesiser that takes the listener immediately back to Who's Next – the true believers will sense something is in the air. When Townshend hits the first chords you are reminded that for all the people who have tried to imitate him, no one plays the guitar quite like that. But there is more here than just the form, the code in the DNA of The Who.

There is content to match: songs of hope, reflection, anger, muscular new Who anthems such as Black Widow's Eyes and It's Not Enough. Oh, and the 10-song mini-opera.

Throughout, Townshend is fully focused on proving The Who are no dinosaurs and an inspired Daltrey delivers a vocal performance to match.

As always, The Who know that fire and intensity is not just created by cranking up the volume.
It's there too on the extraordinary A Man In a Purple Dress, with Daltrey backed only by Townshend's guitar, as the song rages at organised religion and the frenzy in reaction to Townshend's run-in with the law in 2003.

Pete takes his turn at vocals too. On In the Ether he assumes a gruff, Waits-like rumble; he delivers God Speaks to Marty Robbins in a voice as sweet and gentle as the song itself; You Stand By Me, an ode to the power of love, is one of his finest acoustic-guitar songs.

The "second side" of the album is devoted to the Wire and Glass mini-opera, based on a Townshend novella that appeared on his website last year. There's this rock star, see, and these three kids who start a band, and . . . Well, you will figure it out.

The parts of the suite are short – Sound Round blasts out of the blocks in 80 seconds of fury – yet this doesn't feel like a collection of fragments but completed songs artfully edited and arranged into a concise 22-minute package. Two of them, We Got a Hit and the title tune, are included as bonus tracks in extended versions.

The climax comes with Mirror Door, another of Townshend's contemplations on the healing power of music, from Beethoven and Mozart to Howling Wolf, Doris Day, Johnny Ray and Led Zeppelin.
That's a big subject.

And here's a band, against the odds, revitalised, energised, crackling with the electricity that can do it justice.

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


 
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