When The Who—what’s left of ‘em, at least, though since what’s left is Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, that’s good enough—released Endless Wire in 2006, it went mostly unnoticed by the music press, save for a profile Dave Marsh wrote in Mojo magazine. The band—rounded out on stage by Zak Starkey on drums and Pino Palladino on bass—has gotten consistently good reviews since the early 2000s, so it’s a little surprising that their first full new album since 1982’s It’s Hard didn’t get more attention.
Unlike their closest British Invasion peers, the Rolling Stones, The Who essentially stopped courting media attention after their 1989 Tommy anniversary tour. And while the Stones kept putting out mediocre album after album, The Who just stopped, save for a slew of live reissues and hits packages.
But I don’t think it’s just that the band had been out of the new release cycle for more than 2 decades that led to the the dearth of reaction to Endless Wire. I just think that critics and audiences alike didn’t quite know what to make of an album by 60-year-old rock stars that reckons as clearly and honestly with aging, identity, and loss as Endless Wire does. And though the album isn’t without its share of rockers, those songs (“It’s Not Enough,” “Mirror Door,” and “Sound Round”) are echoes of earlier Who classics—enough fire in ‘em to be convincing, but if you compare them to “Baba O’Riley” or “The Real Me,” you’re gonna come up short. The exceptions are “Mike Post Theme,” which finds Daltrey hollering Townshend’s lyrics about men’s inability to reckon with their emotions, and the rolling “Pick Up the Peace.”
Still, the album’s strongest moments are the quieter ones, like the gentle acoustic “You Stand By Me” and “God Speaks, Of Marty Robbins” (both sung by Townshend) and the biting “Man in a Purple Dress,” in which Daltrey spits out Townshend’s lyrics criticizing the absurdity of priests pontificating about morality. But the album’s most poignant moment comes toward the end, with “Tea & Theatre,” a gorgeous reminiscence on a life’s work and a plea for friendship as that life’s work comes to a close: “Lean on my shoulder now/ This story is done/ It's getting colder now/ A thousand songs/ Still smolder now… Before we walk from this stage/ Two of us/ Will you have some tea/ At the theater with me?”
It’s telling that Townshend sings more songs on Endless Wire than on any previous Who album, but both he and Daltrey sing as well as they ever have. Daltrey may not have the vocal strength he once did, but he finds power in nuance, and his growls are gruffer than ever, and all the more affecting because of it. And when the two of them trade lines on the title track that closes the album, it’s just beautiful.
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