From
www.aversion.comEndless Wire
The Who
Universal Republic Records
If there's ever been a band more responsible for fanning the flames of the generation gap, it's The Who. The act's "My Generation" drew a line in the sand: Either you were with the leaper-popping, amphetamine-stuttering mods and their new ways, or you were against them. Now, more than 40 years after singer Roger Daltrey howled "I hope I die before I get old," things aren't so clear-cut: Half the band succumbed to My Generation's grim prophecy (drummer Keith Moon overdosed in '78, while bassist lasted until '02 when too much cocaine triggered a heart attack), while the other half became some of rock's elder statesmen.
And, as elder statesmen go, The Who are doing pretty well with Endless Wire, especially when you start comparing them next to the rest of their generation. Where most of their contemporaries are either dead (John Lennon, George Harrison, Brian Jones), crapping out one pitiful new album to avoid retirement or the country-fair circuit (Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones) or mortgaged their legacy to nostalgia stages and approximations of their glory-years lineup (The Animals, every Beach Boy but Brian Wilson), The Who are back at it. Not just back at it, but making new music -- and Endless Wire is the most relevant recording, save Wilson's Smile and possibly Ray Davies' Other People's Lives, to come from any of rock's golden era architects in years.
That's a pretty big qualifier, though. Endless Wire's certainly better than whatever McCartney or Jagger/Richards are peddling at the moment, but it's a distant second to anything The Who produced in its glory days. Yes, the band sounds old -- a deluge of acoustic tracks sound anything but like the dangerous mods of the band's better years -- and yes, guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend's a little to enamored with his band's past -- "Fragments" self-consciously references bits of "Baba O'Reily" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" -- and, yes, only one cut, "Mike Post Theme," is strong enough to make even a charitable appearance on the next greatest hits collection. Come to Endless Wire looking for The Who of legend (which petered out long before Moon kicked the bucket), and you're bound to be disappointed.
It's a softer, grayer and more introverted who on Endless Wire, an album neatly halved into two sections, a string of unrelated songs then, in a nod to Who history, a "mini-opera," "Wire and Glass." The first stretch waffles between tracks that tip at the band's arena-rock glory and a sometimes ill-fitting acoustic sense. Of the former, "Mike Post Theme," an ode to the emotions conjured by classic television theme songs, successfully approximates the band at its Who's Next peak, while "Black Widow's Eyes" loses the bluster that made The Who an intergenerational icon. "It's Not Enough" bottoms out, with generic '70s hard rock leading the charge.
The band's quiet side's a little more difficult to swallow. Although Townshend's right-wing baiting shots at spirituality make "A Man in a Purple Dress" and "Two Thousand Years" some of his best lyrics to appear under the Who moniker, the duo struggles through the cuts. The folksy "Man in a Purple Dress" seems to only underscore the fact that The Who's down an entire rhythm section (which, at its peak, was arguably the best in rock history), while the mandolins and banjo in "Two Thousand Years" smack of pretense.
The "Wire and Glass" segment leans more toward The Who's traditional rock side, with "We Got a Hit," "Mirror Door" and "Sound Round" mincing a workable, if rather generic, take on the band's classic sound. "Unholy Trinity" continues the folk approach, while everything briefly breaks down altogether in "Trilby's Piano" as Daltrey whips out an over-the-top, operatic delivery that buries the song in cheese and pretense.
The glory days are long gone. That's the unavoidable reminder -- that and 60-year-old millionaires just can't make the most vital rock -- on Endless Wire. Don't dwell on it, though: The Who is growing old gracefully. Or at least as gracefully as a band that came of age next to Paul McCartney and Alan Jardine's Beach Boys can hope for in 2006.
- Matt Schild
Author
