Track Listing

1. Fragments
2. A Man In A Purple Dress
3. Mike Post Theme
4. In The Ether
5. Black Widow's Eyes
6. Two Thousand Years
7. God Speaks, of Marty Robbins
8. It's Not Enough
9. You Stand By Me
10. Sound Round
11. Pick Up the Peace
12. Unholy Trinity
13. Trilby's Piano
14. Endless Wire
15. Fragments Of Fragments
16. We Got A Hit
17. They Make My Dream Come True
18. Mirror Door
19. Tea & Theatre
20. We Got A Hit
21. Endless Wire

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11805 in Music
• Released on: 2006-10-30
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds
• Running time: 59 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Nearly a quarter-century (and bassist John Entwistle) passed between what had been considered the Who's career-capping album, It's Hard and this 21-song epic, which at its best has the band of two pining for the days of Who's Next. Built from the triumph of the mini-opera Wire & Glass EP (included here in its entirety), Endless Wire mixes metaphors of music, war, and religion, while showcasing Roger Daltrey's ageless vocal cords and Pete Townshend at his windmilling best. Launching with a "Baba O'Riley"-like synth break in "Fragments," Daltrey asks "Are we breathing out or breathing in?" and Townshend answers with a thrashing, crashing Gibson. When the volume is turned up, there are echoes of three decades ago. "It's Not Enough" and "Mike Post Theme" conjure images of Entwistle and Keith Moon--the latter song, with its quiet verse and thunderous chorus, recalls "Going Mobile" and longs for Moon to whack it into shape. But the linchpin remains Townshend's songwriting, whether he's questioning faith ("Man in a Purple Dress"), showing gratitude for support ("You Stand By Me"), or dreaming of entertaining immortals into eternity ("Out on an Endless Wire"). By the time it wraps up, Endless Wire tells two things. No, it does not quite rank with the band's best work. But yes, as long as Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey walk the earth in tandem, the Who live on. --Scott Holter

CD Description
A collection of both acoustic and rock numbers, with a 10 song mini-opera as the second half, 'Endless Wire' was a pretty ambitious move for The Who, considering that it's been 24years since their last studio album. Although it won't be overshadowing the triumphs of previous gems like 'Quadrophenia', it still has the essence of The Who, showing that they can still be creative whilst retaining aspects of their original style.

Customer Reviews

Let the music flood your mind[thru headphones!]
I heard this record 3 times and always omitted the acoustic tracks,i just wanted full on rock but this morning i woke up and immediately listened to this fine album thru my headphones..and it makes perfect sense! You have to listen to this record intimately thru a good set of headphones and then you will really appreciate the musicianship and great song writing.Drums and bass?!! very weak and lack conviction and passion,but then entwistle and moon are a hard act to match! Overall a beautiful,intelligent rock n roll record which kick's the ass of puny English bands like Razor light,snow patrol and cold play.

Intriguing, maddening... more than the sum of its parts
OK, I write this as a non-Who fan, and the true believers may rightly doff aside any criticisms I make, since I'm clearly outside the magic circle with this band. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've got Who's Next and I like that, most of it anyway. Live At Leeds is super. Plenty of other Who songs sound great. They kicked up a storm at Live Aid. Errm...

So, you see, I'm reviewing this album from the outside.

And what a frustrating, maddening album it is. On the plus side, it's an intelligent body of work. "Side One" (in old money) is a collection of songs, while "Side Two" is what Townsend calls a "mini-opera". This basically means its a collection of short ditties that sound like demos of longer songs, with an incomprehensible lyrical conceit running through them. I pretty much use my "skip" button for this lot - except for the sublime, elegaic "Tea & Theatre" at the end. The album wraps up with the extended versions of 'Endless Wire' and 'We Got A Hit', both pleasing pop/rock confections.

Also a plus: there's a real attempt by Townsend and Daltrey here to recapture some energy, some rawness, some sense of spontaneity. The swirling opening synths nod, self-referentially, to 'Baba O'Reilly' while Daltrey's not afraid to rasp and roar in a manner quite commendable for a 62-year-old. Some important topics are wrestled with, such as the hypocrisy of organised religion, the ubiquity of media-glamorised crime, the immortality that art confers, etc etc. Definitely to be filed under "intelligent art rock".

That's the plus. The minus is in the sheer, stupifying pretentiousness of the project. The liner notes would be a hysterical parody of beard-stroking rock maestro excess, if they weren't so dismally po-faced. After listing "Principle Musicians", then "Guest Musicians", Townsend devotes pages to himself under the subtitle "Everything Else". Not to be outdown, Daltrey appends a brief column of staggering vanity: he's "an actor, an interpreter, an alchemist who turns words into emotions". Gag! He socks it to Townsend though in a delightfully disingenuous put-down, with a little "well done Pete!" for the man who finally got round to writing, performing and producing most of this. Calm down, girls!

Of course, no one would damn a dog on mere liner notes, but they're symptomatic of this album's failings. While Townsend bats for high-concept, he's just not _deep_ enough to tackle most of these subjects. Well, frankly, Leonard Cohen excepted, not many people are. But Townsend has always come across sounding more like a Sixth Form Review act, consumed with a sense of being very grown-up because he's, like, satirising grown-up stuff, okay? It's embarrassingly juvenile in places. The insult "prat" hurled at a cardinal particularly jars, but hey: it rhymes with hat, after all!

Now, no one who's a fan of Townsend's output is going to be put off, at this late stage, by accusations that it's pretentious and juvenile. I mean Quadrophenia fergoodnessakes! What's always lifted Townsend's rather silly sloganeering disguised-as-lyrics to the status of rock epic has been the music itself.

And, musically, much of this album doesn't disappoint. 'Fragments' opens things out with a clear statement of intent, 'Purple Dress' ticks the acoustic-rock box, 'Mike Post Theme' stamps and thunders, 'Two Thousand Years' is a hold-your-Zippo-high festival pleaser while 'It's Not Enough' is as uplifting a stadium rocker as Townsend can write - which is to say, it's pretty much as good as that sort of thing gets. Nor does high concept conceit always wrestle a song to the floor: 'Black Widow's Eyes' is an unaffected and heartfelt ode to lost love, married to perfect power ballad contours, while 'You Stand By Me' is a suprisingly humble hymn to the band's perennially loyal fan base.

To say that much doesn't disappoint is to admit that some, alas, does. It is of course churlish to complain that Daltrey's lost his range. And it would be cruel to dredge up more hilarities from his liner notes (he compares himself to Olivier and Gielgud! No, really he does!). But Roger's vocals really don't cut it on some of this stuff. While his contemporaries like Robert Plant or even Neil Diamond are following Johnny Cash down the road of replacing high-octane yelping with a sort of grizzled tenderness, Daltrey seems to think that a bum note can be papered over by making it louder and raspier. Particularly, louder. In fact, he occasionally sounds like Grandpa Simpson, with a megaphone.

I'm struggling, then, with sometime-clownish ideas mishandled with sometime-clownish vocalising. And yet... and yet... it doesn't actually sound too bad. In fact, its very flaws can be part of its charm. The egotism and loftiness and shallow earnestness actually lend it an adolescent grandeur - two old coots rediscovering what it felt like to play the village hall.

I'll cheerfully admit, once again, I'm not a proper Who fan, someone for whom Daltrey's larynx is a national treasure and Townsend's music the soundtrack for a generation. But if, like me, you kinda liked The Who's old stuff, then you could do worse than checking this album out. It'll be time and money well spent and provide you with some food for thought - if not about religion and media and immortality etc, then certainly about what happens to rock gods who've turned sixty. And the liner notes are a hoot!

A few great tracks, but very ordinary, overall
I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised given some of the negative comments I've heard about it. I can definitely hear what people are talking about regarding Roger's voice - he seems almost asthmatic compared to his rock-solid mighty voice of old, but this is still quite a fine album nonetheless. The album opener, Fragments gives a knowing nod to Baba O'Riley and is a stormer, and followed up by the cynical theologically-questioning Man In A Purple Dress, I was under the impression that I was about the hear one of the best Who albums they'd ever released - but after that it didn't quite happen. The punch of the opening songs were never quite matched thereafter.

The first half of the album is all good stuff (although I didn't care much for Two Thousand Years) but the Wire & Glass mini-opera didn't quite work for me... not enough power and also just not enough of a feeling that this was the work of a band rather than just Pete. In fact, that's the main thing which is missing from this albeit very good album - Keith and The Ox. It may be obvious, but it is - in my opinion - true. There was a band dynamic which oozed musical chemistry in all of the truly great Who records, but it is lacking a little here and, while this album does shine in places and is an enjoyable, coherent piece of work, it falls a little short of greatness.