Now this<\/i> is shocking.<\/p>\n
Honestly, despite my respect for The Who, I didn\u2019t see this coming. Especially from a Who minus Keith Moon (we\u2019ve known that one for a while) and John Entwistle (that one\u2019s new). For God\u2019s sake, half the band is dead; this would be tantamount to Paul McCartney and Ringo getting back together and recording an album as The Beatles. It shouldn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
But gosh darn it if Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey haven\u2019t delivered a much more fitting coda to the band\u2019s career than the godawful It\u2019s Hard<\/i>. Endless Wire<\/i> is not a great album, but is in an incredibly solid record with a few moments of sustained brilliance. That\u2019s more than anyone could ask for from The Who at this stage in the game.<\/p>\n
Of course the mini-opera on Endless Wire<\/i> has gotten all the press, but the first half of the record cannot be overlooked. Townshend immediately makes the listener recall the glory days with \u201cFragments,\u201d a decided mix of \u201cBaba O’Riley\u201d and Philip Glass. \u201cMike Post Theme\u201d finds Townshend and Daltrey in vintage Who mode, with windmilling guitar riffs and mighty vocal gymnastics everywhere.<\/p>\n
By the time \u201cIt\u2019s Not Enough\u201d rolls around, marking the end of the first half of the record, Daltrey and Townshend have more than earned enough good will towards their fans, basically erasing the memories of the previous two records to bear the Who moniker. And that\u2019s not even including the Wire & Glass<\/i> mini-opera that closes out the matter.<\/p>\n
Tommy <\/i>\u00a0and Quadrophenia<\/i> were not the tightest of concept records; plenty have been puzzled by the stories both of those albums tell. <\/i>Things don\u2019t necessarily change with Endless Wire<\/i>. Even reading through the material online that accompanies the story Townshend seeks to tell in the mini-opera doesn\u2019t really make matters clearer. If anything, the overarching themes and ideas come through \u201cclearer\u201d than a true, defined narrative. The anti-technological spin is very relative for the present and echoes what Townshend attempted to work into the aborted project Lifehouse<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The two shining moments on the second half of Endless Wire<\/i> come with \u201cWe Got A Hit\u201d and \u201cEndless Wire.\u201d The former is classic Who, one of their best songs since The Wbo By Numbers<\/i>. Driving, relentless and incredibly tight, I imagine this number is a showstopper live. \u201cEndless Wire\u201d is a different beast altogether. Boasting a Townshend vocal, the proceedings are pushed along by some gorgeous acoustic work, with killer harmonies to boot.<\/p>\n
All this makes the record sound better than it really is, but I think it\u2019s the aforementioned shock. This record is no embarrassment to the memory of Moon and Entwistle and proves that Daltrey and Townshend did not embarass themselves in old age. The Who may not be what they used to be, but damn it if they can\u2019t make the listener remember the glory days, if just for a little while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5649],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40293","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-who","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40293","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=40293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40293"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}