Erstes Album seit 13 Jahren. Moreover, the changing mood fits Daltrey’s vocals perfectly: gruffer and more weathered than it once was, his voice imbues the lyrics with a sense of hard-won experience, alternately weary and fraught. At its best, WHO somehow rocks with a conviction that would make the band’s younger selves proud — even if they hoped this day would never come. It’s also a song that taps into the tension that’s always simmering below the surface of classic Who songs, but it feels different now. The band may be only half the Who they were when they formed, but Who is worthy of the Who name. Es ist gut geworden! It’s a nod to the past but still wholly new. If we’re to take them at their word, Daltrey and Pete Townshend have lived far longer than they ever wanted (or maybe expected) to. Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. It’s Townshend’s guitar playing, meanwhile, that nearly drowns out that passage of time altogether. Amid the innovations of 1966, he protested that pop’s innocence had been tragically lost. This album is pairing with Who By Numbers and Face Dances, almost as good as Who Are You. Starting with The Who, here we go: The Who make a return in 2019, releasing their first album in more than 13 years. (Polydor)Despite their precarious relationship, Daltrey and Townshend return for their first album in 13 years, snarling at the Grenfell disaster and hoping for world peace, Last modified on Thu 28 Nov 2019 18.34 GMT, The first words you hear on the Who’s 12th studio album are Roger Daltrey, telling the band’s audience to get stuffed.
But none of that papers over the virtual absence of melody, and what was positioned as the album’s centerpiece ends up feeling more like an intermission. Sign up for our newsletter. Only almost because the late Keith Moon and John Entwistle formed perhaps the least replaceable rhythm section in rock history and because Daltrey has rather generously shredded much of his throat tissue to give us moments like this. The upsetters … Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey. And the slow-building “Rockin’ in Rage,” finds Daltrey singing about feeling like a mute if he’s not able to speak his truth, even though he’s getting on in age – “I won’t leave the stage,” he threatens, if he can’t rock in rage. Then again, it feels, well, very Who. In fact, Pete Townsend contributed significantly to the Roger Daltrey solo album “As Long As I Have You” last year. The Who – ‘WHO’ review: 13 years since their last album, this stands up alongside their classics . Sorry Pete, your fans probably won’t hate these songs. They did this with words, too: “Hope I die before I get old,” snarled Roger Daltrey, 54 years ago, in “My Generation”. The good news is that, musically, the new record could almost substitute as a proper introduction to the band’s sound. Daltrey still has all the tough-guy bravado of his early days, and there is still a dramatic combo of brutality and gentleness throughout Who, but it’s tasteful, and that’s not an easy balance for bands that have been around as long as the Who. Nor is Who afraid of assaulting its audience’s preconceptions. The first Who album in 13 years opens with a perfectly cynical Pete Townshend lyric: “I don’t care/I know you’re gonna hate this song.” But it’s kind of hard to hate something that feels so familiar. Even the album cover is an acknowledgement of the record’s innate Who factor; it’s by Peter Blake, who made the Who’s similarly laid-out Face Dances sleeve (as well as Sgt. A Baba O’Riley-ish synth flutters around Street Song; an echo of Substitute’s intro haunts the acoustic guitar of I Don’t Wanna Get Wise. But even if the band are no longer especially inventive or graceful, they’ve remained every bit as blunt as they were half a century ago when they were waging generational warfare. Closing track “She Rocked My World” has a Latin jazz vibe but none of Townshend’s flamenco flourishes and at least one lyric that’s regrettable for any songwriter of any age: “You hear people say, ‘She rocked my world’/But they don’t mean it the way I do.” And “Break the News,” penned by Pete’s brother, Simon, has a sort of Americana vibe more akin to recent pop songs by the Lumineers than the Who. Roger Daltrey sings the lyric and the ones that follow, claiming the song isn’t “new” or “diverse,” with the same anger and conviction as the Who’s earliest music, recorded more than half a century ago, and the melody is almost identical to the opening “I don’t mind” of the band’s 1966 single “The Kids Are Alright.” He even takes it a step farther, later in the song, singing, “I don’t mind/Other guys ripping off my song.” But even when Townshend, who wrote the majority of Who hits, is the one ripping himself off, it sounds as authentic as it does ironic. Nor is Who afraid of assaulting its audience’s preconceptions. From the moment he cuts, saw-like, into “All This Music Must Fade”, you know that could only be Pete playing. The Who Remain Blunt as Ever on Uneven WHO Daltrey and Townshend are … At the same time, Townshend has penned a well measured blues song about the horrors of Guantanamo Bay, deceptively titled “Ball and Chain.” “There’s a pretty piece of Cuba, designed to cause men pain,” Daltrey sings amid Townshend’s fluttering guitar lines. The fantastic Detour has a definite air of Magic Bus, as well as a titular nod to the name that the nascent Who plied their trade under in the early 60s. The fact that the song, and much of the record, feels like Classic Rock Comfort Food may be why the band tiled the album simply Who — their first, official self-titled record (as opposed to The Who Sell Out, Who’s Next, Who Are You and on and on and on). By the time punk arrived, he was declaring himself old and irrelevant: “Am I doing it all again? “Hero Ground Zero” has the opposite problem: It’s all buoyant energy that just hops along without direction. Inspired by the Grenfell disaster, Street Song carries a distinct hint of Won’t Get Fooled Again’s furious snarl; Beads on One String rather sweetly sticks fast to a hippy-ish notion of universal brotherhood and the potential for world peace. This is obviously not the way heritage rock artists essaying their first album in 13 years are meant to carry on. The sonic nods to “classic” Who sit alongside tracks that do things the “classic” Who would never have countenanced. Where other lead guitarists would play solos, Townshend builds textures, and they skin these songs like sandpaper. Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, The Who. As it builds, the soliloquy of “Rockin’ in Rage” sparks moments of Quadropheniac déjà vu. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. Take “Detour”, which struts on with a Bo Diddley swagger recalling “Magic Bus”, but quickly yields to a gangly verse that just sits there, like a towel on a clothesline. However, “As Long As I Have You” … … We’re chewing a bone.” He was 32. For the most part, he does well with what he’s still got: pulling off a convincing grizzled bluesman on the Guantanamo-protest “Ball and Chain” as well as a wistful lounge room balladeer on cabaret-ready closer “She Rocked My World”.
Pepper’s) and it contains nods to the band’s idols (Chuck Berry and Muhammad Ali) and their past (panels depicting Townshend smashing his guitar, a Union Jack, even Batman and Robin, since they once covered the Adam West Batman theme). They insisted that the kids are alright, wrote entire operas from the adolescent perspective, and violently destroyed their instruments on stage, as if mocking the very idea of mortality. Despite songs steeped in the band’s once-bragged-about Maximum R&B (witness “Detour,” which could fit on My Generation or Sell Out, and references the band’s “I Can’t Explain”), arena-rock grandeur (“Hero Ground Zero”), and plenty of teenage-wasteland synths (“Street Song,” “I Don’t Wanna Get Wise”), they now have some much-needed perspective. That alone — and, yes, the power chords — makes it a worthy addition to the band’s storied discography. Of course, half of the Who did get old, which means there’s a strong chance this might be their last album. No member of the rock aristocracy has ever seemed as troubled by the very notion of being a rock star as Pete Townshend. If not everything here works – there’s nothing wrong with the political sentiment of Ball and Chain, it just feels a little lumbering and clumsy – there’s something exciting about hearing Townshend vacillating between declaring himself spent and readying himself for another charge. The Who's 'Who' is classic-rock comfort food. It’s easy to hear, sure, why they debuted this song months ago while on tour with an orchestra; it lends itself easily to a vibrant, lush arrangement and surely had no problem reaching the backs of arenas. The Verdict: Pete Townshend recently told The New York Times that, even at his advanced age, he has no idea who he really is. Maybe that has to do with the fact that Daltrey and Townshend didn’t spend any time in the studio together when they made the album, or maybe it’s just something that’s deep within them. It’s not a rock opera (unlike their previous album, 2006’s Endless Wire, which contained a mini opera) and it’s better for it. You get the feeling Townshend knows precisely who’s going to buy a new Who album in 2019…
Greats songs: Hero Ground Zero, Beads on One String, I'll Be Back and She Rocked My World. Want more Rolling Stone? In truth, Townshend ruined his own plan by being such an innovative songwriter and performer that giving up no longer seemed like an option. WHO bottoms out with the maudlin “Break the News”, composed by Pete’s younger brother, Simon. As far as Townshend was concerned, they were a kind of art school project, complete with a thesis he’d written under the influence of Gustav Metzger’s concept of auto-destructive art, announcing that, as soon as they got famous, they were going to split up. Not so greats songs: Break the News, Street Song, All This Music Must Fade and I Don't Wanna Get Wise. The only missteps are when they venture a little too far from the Who formula. “I tried hard to stay young,” he sings, “but the high notes were sung.”. This album may not represent one of The Who’s strongest collections of songs, but it’s the rare case study of a legacy brand as a vehicle for plumbing new ideas and moving forward.
Meet the People We're Counting on for a Covid-19 Vaccine, Watch ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Moderate Presidential Debate in ‘We’re All Doomed’ Video, Mac Davis, Country Singer and Elvis Presley Songwriter, Dead at 78, In Defending Hunter, Biden Showed Us His Potential, Miley Cyrus Releases Raucous Live Cover of ‘Heart of Glass’, There’s No Way In Hell Trump Doesn’t Know Who the Proud Boys Are, Rob Halford’s Memoir ‘Confess’: 20 Wild Things We Learned, Chaos Chaos Plan ‘Support Black Womxn’ Livestream With Fred Armisen, Reggie Watts, Rob Halford Recalls ‘George Michael Moment’ After Public Sex Arrest in Memoir Excerpt. Who certainly does some of the things that artists of their vintage are supposed to do, including make knowing references to their most beloved work. But the most Who-esque thing about it might be the way its songs repeatedly pick at questions of the Who’s own relevance.