Apparently Pete Townshend likes to work at a snail's pace. So the near quarter of a century that we all waited to see a complete new album from The Who should be no surprise to those who know him.
Hell, fans of the Who collectively held their breaths from 1983 (the year the band first split) to 1999, when The Who finally regrouped (in between, there were brief reunion tours in 1989 and 1996-97) as a working band. And after a powerhouse US tour in 2000 and the band's show-stealing set at the Concert For New York in 2001, they were on their way to reclaiming their self proclamation in the '70s as the Worlds Greatest Rock Band.
However, after the unexpected death of bassist John Entwistle on the eve of the band's 2002 tour, it seemed for a day or so that the band was maybe done for. That was put to rest as Entwistle was quickly (and kind of insensitively) replaced by Pino Palladino and the band soldiered on. Not only have they carried on, but The Who has been more active as a band than they had been since the early-'80s.
As Townsend has been promising new material for years, he finally has delivered a fully new product with Endless Wire. While new releases from most classic rock bands don’t usually do much as far as chart action goes, Endless Wire had a respectable debut at #7 on the Billboard Top 200 during its first week of release.
While the new album is nowhere in the league of legendary classic Who-creations (Who’s Next, Quadrophenia, The Who By Numbers) or even as good as some of their past good records (Who Are You), Endless Wire contains 21 new songs, which includes “Wire & Glass,” a 10 song mini-opera. All in all, the album is more ambitious than one would expect, but it is not really a Who album that one will spin on the regular level of the before mentioned records.
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