CD Reviews

The Who

Wire & Glass: Six Songs From A Mini-Opera | Polydor UK

By TED DROZDOWSKI | September 11, 2006

2.0 Stars

Pete Townshend’s obsession with the Internet — the best place to get this import-only EP — spills into the band again. This six-song sampler from a mini-opera — due in full in October as the first Who album in a quarter-century — about kids who start a rock band after discovering some papers belonging to a has-been rock star that are plans for some kind of grand Internet experiment (Townshend’s own notes for Psychoderelict?) is mediocre at best. Daltrey’s voice sounds ravaged by the years of hard screaming, though his raggedness is right for the opening “Sound Round,” a brief, solid chunk of pub rock driven by the Keith Moon abandon of Peter Huntington’s drumming. The next four tracks are also short, clocking in at around a minute and a half each. They do sound like the Who, with those big, dramatic Townshend power chords at the fore. But if that’s Townshend singing on “Endless Wire” and “They Made My Dream Come True,” he’s even worse off than Daltrey. And the painful “We’ve Got a Hit” sounds like something clipped from a cornball ’50s musical about Brill Building writers. At 4:13, the closing “Mirror Door” is long enough to qualify as a legitimate song, and it’s interesting enough too, exploring the idea of music as a transcendental force. Let’s hope that’s where the rest of this work is headed.

The Who | TD Banknorth Garden, 100 Legends Way, Boston | September 16 | 617.931.2000

Related: The old and the new, No reason to complain, For Pete’s sake, More

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