Endless Wire
Polydor

It’s 20-odd years since the last Who album and Pete Townshend isn’t holding back. “Are we breathing out or are we breathing in?” is Endless Wire’s opening salvo. No change there, then. Townshend is the last songwriter you’d accuse of writing clichés, but his lyrical concerns haven’t really moved on since their first single, I Can’t Explain, in 1965 — he’s still wondering what we’re here for, what it’s all about.

Of course, Endless Wire takes some time to reach a conclusion — which is, essentially, “dunno”. A cast of characters and forgotten pop stars weave through the lyrics, attempting an explanation. Marty Robbins, for instance, was a country singer who had hits in the Sixties with El Paso and Devil Woman, and wrote the racist, right-wing ditties Ain’t I Right and My Own Native Land for his guitarist Johnny Freedom (some maintain Freedom is actually Robbins).

Presumably Townshend is referencing these antics on the notably pretty God Speaks of Marty Robbins (“I heard the heavens sing/ Predicting Marty Robbins/ I knew I’d find music and time were the perfect plan”), but I can’t work out why.

If The Who’s lyrical confusions were there from the off, their sonic palette became settled around the time of Who’s Next, in 1971: chunks of bombastic guitar; drums like catherine wheels; acoustic ballads with delicate harmonies. Here, the opener Fragments has a sparkly synth line that deliberately echoes Who’s Next’s epochal Baba O’Reilly, while It’s Not Enough has harmonies straight out of Behind Blue Eyes. This is no bad thing — it could yet be a US radio hit.

There is a weak point on a number of these songs, and it’s Roger Daltrey’s voice. Some time at the turn of the Seventies he ditched his clear, soulful style and developed a gargling growl somewhere between football commentator Brian Moore and Matt Goss. Age has not added to its charm.

Daltrey has often claimed total ignorance of what Townshend is driving at in his songs, but Mike Post Theme could be the first time he has sounded audibly confused. A reference even more arcane than Marty Robbins, Post penned the TV themes for Hill Street Blues and The Rockford Files. Mike Post Theme sadly doesn’t sound like a Mike Post theme at all. It’s entirely baffling for us, too.

The one song that does get its message across directly is Man in a Purple Dress, a broadside against organised religion: “How dare you cover your head to hide your face from God?” The centrepiece, though, is Wire and Glass, a “mini-opera” in 12 parts. Much of it appears to be autobiographical. Trilby’s Piano is string-laden and lovely, We Got a Hit is bubblegum, pure and simple, and dead catchy. All of it is quite endearing: “We found a dream to dream, we got rich and famous . . . we talked a load of crap.”

Endless Wire does sound undernourished alongside The Who Sell Out or Who’s Next, totemic albums from more than three decades ago. Unlike their later albums, though, it never tries too hard, never attempts to touch the Zeitgeist: it gets by on its self-deprecating, daffy charisma quite nicely.

If Coldplay didn’t make an album for 20 years, I wonder if we’d care as much.

BOB STANLEY

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