Railing against convention since the beginning of their career of more than 50 years, The Who were always unlikely to settle into their twilight years churning out the greatest hits.
There was a compilation in 2014 and an accompanying tour, and surviving members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend have been around the venues playing both the Quadrophenia and Tommy albums in full. Now, 13 years after they last recorded any new material, come 11 fresh songs.
Perpetual overthinker Townshend, 74, is the first to acknowledge that fans will always prefer the old stuff. The opening line he gives to Daltrey, 75, on energetic All This Music Must Fade, is: “I don’t care, I know you’re gonna hate this song.” Daltrey’s bark sounds less furious than it used to, and certain sounds that echo their past — the urgent, Baba O’Riley-style keyboards of Street Song, or the raw rock ’n’ roll of Detour, which begins: “People try to crash lyin’ down,” in a similar phrasing to My Generation’s first line — are fun without feeling fresh.
There are interesting detours elsewhere. Townshend will surprise a few people on ballad I’ll Be Back, which mixes weary harmonica with a rapper’s Auto-Tune effect on his voice. The pounding I Don’t Wanna Get Wise and dramatic strings of Hero Ground Zero won’t cause a mass exodus to the loos when they tour again next year, and the whole is far preferable to laurel-resting.
