I have this friend, see? He is probably one of the biggest Who fans out there; over the years he and I have engaged in countless debates over who was better, Led Zeppelin or The Who. Right when I started to really get into The Who, he kept pummeling me into listening to this album, which he called one of the best debut albums ever. Given his enthusiasm, and the fact that if I didn\u2019t acquiesce the man wouldn\u2019t stop, The Who\u2019s debut album rolled its way across the iPod.<\/p>\n
Back in December, the Vault featured a Dynamic Debuts retrospective, a solid list that did not feature this record, which make sense. One cannot escape what The Who would accomplish after the success of this record, and this disc really doesn\u2019t provide many glimpses of what Townshend and company would create in just a few years.<\/p>\n
That being said, one cannot question the abilities of the band upon first listen. Daltrey doesn\u2019t reach the levels of bravado he would come to on Who\u2019s Next<\/em>, and Townshend certainly would evolve as a guitarist, but these aren\u2019t incompetents strutting around trying to rock as loud as they can. Keith Moon is at his most unrestrained and explosive; the final 30 seconds of \u201cMy Generation\u201d feature a flailing Moon at his best.<\/p>\n That song really broke The Who through to the mainstream and it still is one of their best. I love Daltrey\u2019s stuttering vocals; they are just brimming with confidence and arrogance. Entwhistle\u2019s bass is brought to the forefront, further demonstrating his underrated skills. There\u2019s Mooney of course, going bonkers left and right, but you can\u2019t help but get caught up in his performance. And of course, Townshend gets the credit for writing the strongest melody on the record.<\/p>\n My friend would kill me if he ever reads this, but to be honest I hear a lot of The Beatles on this record. That really isn\u2019t a shocker given the historical context, and The Who perform here with much more energy than the Fab Four could ever muster, but sonically it\u2019s the same pop\/rock mold. One grand exception is \u201cThe Ox,\u201d a dynamite 4-minute instrumental that once again proves why Moon was one of the all-time greats. The speed at which he plays is astounding; add on to that the fact he never really loses sense of the overall purpose for the song.<\/p>\n Yes, Virginia, there is more to like on this record than what I\u2019ve mentioned so far. The harmonies were much better than I expected; I really dug the Beach Boys vibe on \u201cLa La La Lies.\u201d The brooding intensity of \u201cThe Good\u2019s Gone\u201d probably feature some of Daltrey\u2019s best work on the album, while \u201cInstant Party (Circles)\u201d in my opinion is the first germ of Tommy<\/em>.<\/p>\n It is the scattershot nature of The Who Sings My Generation<\/em> that weakens it. There was many a moment when I found myself liking this, but the entire package just doesn’t add up to a complete whole. However, there is no question that The Who could play with the big boys, a statement that only grew truer in the following years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5649],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39834","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-who","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39834"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}