Austinist CD Review: The Who's Endless Wire

Okay, kids, here’s the scoop. There once was a rock band from England. They had a drummer who liked to dress up as a Nazi for kicks, an under-appreciated bassist who was the silent backbone of the band, a lead singer who fancied himself an actor – and wasn’t bad, so long as his character was deaf, dumb and blind – and a hyperactive guitarist who was once a suspected of involvement in a child porn ring. They liked to play songs a lot heavier and louder than their contemporaries, and particularly favored childish themes, trashing instruments, and singing like girls. They were known as The Who, and back in the day your parents and your grandparents used to rock out to their tunes.

Three decades have now passed since The Who produced their finest work. The drummer, Keith Moon, is long since dead of an overdose on prescription pills. The bassist, John Entwistle, is gone, too. That leaves Pete Townshend, still a stellar musician (and not, in fact, a pedophile), and Roger Daltry, still boasting curly locks of blond hair though a little less limber in the pipes. These two surviving members of The Who have taken it upon themselves to add to the band’s already impressive catalog. Their new release, Endless Wire, is their first album of entirely new material since 1982’s rightly forgotten It’s Hard.

Endless Wire begins with a poorly disguised variation on the intro to "Baba O’Riley," and pretty much stays the course of mediocrity from there. Tracks like "A Man in a Purple Dress," "Black Widow’s Eyes" and "Two Thousand Years" have titles that fit right along with those from The Who’s classic years, which is a good thing because the songs fail to compare on any other level. The sad fact is, The Who died with Keith Moon, and though they’ve done some strong touring the decades since his death, they’ve consistently failed to produce new music of the caliber of their glory days. Endless Wire is just another example, an unnecessary amendment to a great band’s legacy. While it’s refreshing to see one of our favorite bands get renewed attention from the music press, we dread to think that this album may serve as an introduction to The Who for a younger generation. With that in mind, if you’ve got any Maximum R&B virgins on your Christmas list, pick ‘em up a copy of Who’s Next instead and give them a real introduction to rock ‘n’ roll.