Uncut Review

[L. Bird]

Haven't seen this posted.  From Whochat Forum:


Almost exactly 24 years since The ‘Oo’s last studio album (1982’s It’s 
Hard), Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have finally overcome their studio 
phobia and delivered a 19 track, 56 minute song suite comprising vaporous 
acoustic laments, nihilistic numbskull Who-rock and – naturally - a ten-song 
mini-opera. En route, there are enough thematic riddles and symptoms of 
mid-life malaise (they are both in their early sixties) to keep students of 
Who-ology in business for a decade. But there’s also a sense of closure, 
which suggests these grizzled veterans may finally have found a way of 
tackling their demons outside of the psychiatrist’s chair.

Not that The Who’s 11th studio album serves as some form of musical 
rapprochement. Despite all they’ve been through in the last few years, 
Endless Wire is – like all Who albums - Townshend’s record to the core; 
pretentious and portentous, but packed with spirit and a lacerating 
intelligence.

Things start briskly enough. Ushered in by an oscillating riff hijacked from 
“Baba O’Reilly”, “Fragments” is a thinly disguised call-to-arms for fans of 
Tommy to dust off their credit cards and worship once more at the altar of 
the powerchord. When the crashing guitars and strident holler of “The Mike 
Post Theme” follows shortly after (think “We’re Not Gonna Take It”), you can 
almost see Tommy Saxondale lighting up a spliff and saluting the “descending 
arpeggios reminiscent of autumn leaves”. So far, so good.

It’s with the Dylan-esque “Man In A Purple Dress”, though, that Endless Wire 
begins to get really interesting. Incontestibly about the media circus 
surrounding Townshend’s police caution for a single case of accessing child 
pornography in 2003, it’s a vicious sideswipe at those who used it to score 
points at his expense. “How dare you be the one to assess?/Me in this 
God-forsaken mess/You, a man in a purple dress!” rages Daltrey, touchingly, 
in Townshend’s defence, whilst the line, “Men above men/Or prats?/With your 
high hats,” should, at the very least, have them rolling in the aisles at 
Westminster Abbey.

There’s hope amidst the fury, too. “You Stand By Me”, sung by Towshend 
himself, testifies to the healing power of love whilst hinting at the 
humbling dark nights of the soul he surely suffered: “You take my 
side/Against those who lied/ Gimme back my pride”. It’s hardly 
laugh-a-minute stuff, but the schizophrenic drive which has seen Townshend 
morph from Barthes-quoting mod, to boiler-suited boffin, to good-natured 
host of his own website TV show, ensures tunes also come thick and fast.

Deep breath. The second half of the album consists of a ten song mini-opera 
entitled “Wire And Glass”, previewed in the summer on the similarly-titled 
EP and based on Townshend’s novella, The Boy Who Heard Music, that he 
published as a blog on his website last year. Tempting as it is to see “Wire 
And Glass” as an extra twist to the Gordian knot of the never-ending 
Lifehouse project (famously dismissed by Daltrey with the words, “Nah, won’t 
work -you’ll never get enough wire”) Wire & Glass instead deals with an 
apocalyptic vision of a “society strangled by communications” and sounds – 
thankfully - as though it could have been rescued from the cutting room 
floor of Quadrophenia.

“I fear the future as I take in the view/ Don’t know where to head to now,” 
gasps Daltrey on the storming “Sound Round”, whilst a thunderous “Pick Up 
The Peace” wouldn’t be out of place on the next Oasis album - if it didn’t 
segue, after a minute and a half, into a jaunty banjo-led jig called “Unholy 
Trinity’”. Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, it climaxes with 
“Mirror Door”, an utterly bonkers rollcall of the musical greats (“Johnny 
Cash and Johnnie Ray/ Amadeus and Ludvig Van/ Henry, Johann and the Doo-Dah 
Band”), before finally bidding us a very British farewell with “Tea & 
Theatre”. “Before we walk from the stage/ Will you have more tea?” None of 
it, for all the digital jiggery-pokery Townshend catalogues in the 
sleevenotes, sounds like it was written or recorded after 1974.

Despite all of this, Endless Wire doesn’t feel like some Life On Mars-style 
glitch in the time-space continuum. Having spent the last 20 years touring 
intermittently as a Greatest Hits cash-cow - even after the tragic death of 
John Entwhistle in 2002 - the over-riding sensation is of The Who Two and 
their cohorts (Pino Palladino on bass, Zak Starkey and Peter Huntingdon on 
drums, Townshend’s brother Simon on backing vocals, the faithful John 
‘Rabbit’ Bundrick on keys) battling heroically to conjure up music that can 
match The Who in their pomp. Part exorcism, part quixotic attempt to raise 
the bar for rock’s modern day songwriters, Endless Wire serves as both an 
accomplished sonic full-stop for the band and a brave and necessary means 
for Pete Townshend to address his core audience in the wake of his brush 
with the tabloids.

Madly ambitious and deeply heartfelt, it’s a grand folly in the great 
tradition of Brish rock.

“I’m still briefly alive,” wrote Townshend gloomily in his sleevenotes for 
the Thirty Years Of Maximum R&B box set. Ten years on, he sounds 
reinvigorated.

PAUL MOODY

http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/the_who/reviews/8862

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