The Oregonian reviews Endless Wire

[Brian Cady]

http://tinyurl.com/frz9q

CD review: Long-awaited 'Wire' carries a charge 
Friday, October 06, 2006
MARTY HUGHLEY

In 1982, the Who released what was -- not counting several concert recordings, compilations and soundtracks -- its 10th album in 18 years. The record was titled "It's Hard," and the phrase seemed to sum up the outlook of its weary creators, who would soon set out on a farewell tour. As "The Rolling Stone Record Guide" summed it up, the album "ended things with a relative whimper -- the record was competent, but the energy and vision were gone." Singer Roger Daltrey was quoted later as saying that the record never should have been released.

No doubt it was hard for the Who then. Only a few years before, drummer Keith Moon, one of the most irrepressible forces in all of rock, had died from an overdose of sedatives. Then in 1979 there was the tragedy in Cincinnati, where 11 fans were killed in the crush to get into the band's Riverfront Coliseum show. The younger, brasher sound of punk rock had posed a challenge to the Who's identity as rock's most transcendent anarchists; and at the same time, the group seemed daunted by the shadow of its own towering legacy.

The backdrop to the new "Endless Wire" -- the Who's 11th album, by that strict reckoning -- is quite different. The past 21/2 decades have solo albums by the band's prime mover, Pete Townshend, repeated reunion tours of the group, and numerous repackagings, vault-clearing compilations and live CDs and DVDs of its oeuvre. Another band member is gone (bassist John Entwistle died in 2002). Expectations of potency and relevance have shrunk.

Yet "Endless Wire," due in stores Oct. 31, proves that there's still some energy and vision in the old blokes yet.

While it's not about to make anyone forget the glories of "Who's Next" or "Quadrophenia," the album sounds credibly like the Who, with moments of stirring power-chord rock 'n' roll, dashes of quasi-orchestral ambition, and lyrics that find Townshend worrying some of the same themes (the trapdoors of fame and fan connection, the yearning for redemption, the pomposity of the powerful, and so on) that have pre-occupied him for 40 years.

The album opens with a shimmering of sequenced synthesizer that immediately calls to mind the memorable intro to "Baba O'Riley." It's a conscious nod to the band's history, serving as a brief prologue, a familiar portent of scope and dynamism. The song those synth squiggles kick off, "Fragments," then introduces an air of existential rumination: "Are we breathing out, or breathing in? Are we leaving life, or moving in? Exploding out, imploding in? Ingrained in good, or stained in sin?" And if the song never expands into the kind of grand answer Townshend might once have reached for, it's questioning air is perhaps more appropriate for such a seeker.

"Man in a Purple Dress," a gracefully simple melody through which Daltrey bites fiercely into lyric, skewers the pretensions of piety. Townshend croaks Tom Waits-like through the ruminative, Sondheim-styled ballad "In the Ether." "God Speaks to Marty Robbins" shows a country slant to Townshend's interests. The febrile "It's Not Enough," full of frustration and yearning, comes closest to being a classic Who rock anthem.

If these disparate strands don't quite coalesce into any overarching statement, they're not meant to. The second half of the album, though, ostensibly is Townshend's latest mini-opera, "Wire and Glass." On the plus side, it shows more consistent punch than the earlier tracks. But its thematic threads aren't much more clearly interwoven, and its gentle ending, "Tea & Theater," is as oddly anti-climactic as its opening, the propulsive "Sound Round," is abrupt.

As a whole, "Endless Wire" seems oddly shaped, but that may be simply a result of 24 years of bottled ambition that's built up behind it. In terms of meeting a creative challenge, it doesn't sound like things are so hard for the Who anymore. 

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