King Crimson: Absent Lovers; Live in Montreal 1984

Absent Lovers

Best song: Indiscipline

Worst song: Sartori in Tangier

Overall grade: 6

Prog live albums are hit and miss. Some bands, like Jethro Tull and ELP, made great ones, while other bands like Genesis and Rush didn’t really add anything to their studio versions. King Crimson, similarly, also made hit and miss live albums. Under ‘miss’, see early release Earthbound as well as ThraKattaK. Under ‘hit’, see this one.

The approach Fripp and company took with this release was not to try to tick off material from all stages of their career, and to focus heavily on the New Wave style material that had characterised their three 80s albums, although there were a couple of interludes to play a song each from ‘Lark’s Tongues’ and ‘Red’. This decision gave the concert a more uninterrupted, cohesive feel, so that it’s very clear that you’re listening to the same band all the way through.

Things are brilliant right from the perfectly-timed, gradual build-up of ‘Entry of the Crims’. Robert Fripp must have spent years and years getting this one right. It was worth it, though; he creeps me out no end on this, the kind of creepy that means you can’t quite tear yourself away. It mostly serves as a very extended build up (read: longer than the song itself) to ‘Lark’s Tongues in Aspic, Part III’ as well as mentally preparing the audience for the onslaught to come.

And when it does, it’s fantastic. ‘Lark’s Tongues’ just blows the original out of the water, and it was already the best song on Three. It’s a lightning-fast instrumental that takes all kinds of side bends and U-turns such that you can never quite keep up with it, and any audience member who wasn’t already fully engrossed would have been forced to sit up and pay attention. ‘Lark’s II’ also has its place on Disc 2 of the record, although personally I would have liked to hear the two songs played back to back, to hear the callbacks between the two juxtaposed against the very different musical styles. Still, both are individually fascinating too.

The other song from the 70s days, ‘Red’, doesn’t stick out as much as it should. Adrian Belew and Tony Levin adding their own twists to the song bring it more up to date with the newer stuff, and the less studio-precise live setting makes the recent material feel more classic, and all in all ‘Red’ blends in pretty well. If ‘Starless’ had been included, I probably would have written it off as something too sacred to be messed with, but although I love the original ‘Red’ I actually equally appreciate this new version, although I still can’t see it as the definitive version of the song.

 The other two 80s albums of King Crimson, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair, are distinctively average. Very listenable, but without the idiosyncrasies that made Discipline such a success. And yet put in this live context, a lot of them shine just as much as that favourite of mine does. In fact, it makes picking a best song incredibly hard, since there’s the difficulty of whether to pick, say, ‘Indiscipline which was an already amazing song made even better, or something like ‘Industry’ which so wildly improves on its studio version that it takes on a whole other life.

 Interestingly enough, there are no true improvisations here (just extended sections to some songs), which are certainly what Crimson were famous for earlier in their career. I wonder, if I went to a King Crimson show and everything was drawn from pre-written material, would I be disappointed? When the songs are as good as this, it’s hard to say, but I do think that the spontaneous music creation is a big part of the band, and hearing the members play off each other live would definitely be interesting, although as this show was only recorded on one night it would be quite a risk.

I wasn’t a massive fan of ‘Dig Me’ on Three; I see it as a failed experiment, but here, coming in the middle of a section Belew describes as “the weird stuff”, it no longer seems like experimenting for experimenting’s sake and is actually engaging. There’s other good stuff from the same album too: ‘Sleepless’ is literally ruled by Bruford who delivers a stunningly powerful performance, and (as already mentioned) ‘Industry’ which showed serious potential in the studio but only fully comes into its own in the more fleshed-out and atmospheric version we see here.

‘Beat’ is the least represented of the three 80s albums, and while I really enjoy the extended interpretation of ‘Waiting Man’ where all the band members play excellently, my favourite part of ‘Sartori in Tangier’ is the bit where Belew asks the audience if they know any good jokes. Truth be told, nobody plays any worse on this song than anywhere else, but it feels like it was thrown in just to get more representation for the album, and so it feels unnecessary and with so many other good instrumentals on the album, its comparative weaknesses definitely show. Then, lastly, there’s ‘Heartbeat’ which is well placed in the encore for being one of the most conventionally song-orientated and – dare I say it – catchy KC songs ever.

As far as ‘Discipline’ itself goes, its contributions aren’t massively altered – because they don’t need to be - but are just played with more energy, emotion and unpredictability. Doing these detailed songs on a live album requires impeccable production, which is achieved perfectly, especially sticking out on your ‘Indiscipline’ and your ‘Matte Kudasai’.

Overall, I’d have to pick ‘Indiscipline’ as my overall favourite song, simply because I never thought it could be improved upon and yet they still managed. My expectations were so high before hearing it for the first time, but the band exceeded them with their precision playing and involvement in their chillingly slowed-down performance. Yet ‘Thela Hun Ginjeet’ also proves a highlight as Levin takes it and runs with it all over the place, Belew following close behind. And the intense and fast-paced ‘Elephant Talk’ is a perfect grand finale to what must have been a spectacular live show to attend. I can only hope that when the band start playing live again next year, they’re even half as good as this.

All in all, a truly great live album, and one that makes ‘Beat’ and ‘Three of a Perfect Pair’ wholly unnecessary, as you can find everything you need here. It shows no signs of the band getting tired, even though it was the last concert they would play for ten years. Still, I guess it’s not that surprising… after all, Fripp already had experience with going out on a high note.

Sigur Ros Tour 2013

Sigur Rós ‘Kveikur’ Tour 2013

Date: 20 November 2013

Location: Brighton Centre, Brighton

Support: i break horses

Special guests: n/a

The Wednesday just gone, I saw what is most likely to be the last concert I see until mid February. This is still very hard for me to write and I’m not entirely sure that I can survive for that long, so wish me luck. Anyway, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this one in quite a few ways. I know all of Sigur Rós’ albums, but I didn’t entirely know how the music was going to translate to a live setting. Add to that how they’re always right at the top of those ‘best live acts’ list and I was really quite intrigued about the entire evening.

I was kept in suspense for quite a while. Though doors opened at 6.30pm, the band didn’t come on stage until 9. There was a half-hour set by a support act, though, which I checked out. They were called ‘i break horses’ (no uppercase letters on the sign, anyway) and were a Swedish duo who hid themselves behind a translucent white curtain and played computerised, soundscapey music which was both beautiful and futuristic; a good complement to the headliners. I was particularly interested by the breathy, ethereal vocals they put on top of quite a few of their tracks, and I definitely would investigate further.

I’d thought that the white curtain would have been for them, either because they always used it or so that nobody could properly see the stage until Sigur Rós took the stage, but when they did, they kept it hiding them for the first couple of songs. They began with the new ‘Yfirboro’ and the () song ‘Vaka’, which happens to be one of my favourites, two very light and minimalistic songs, and the whole effect was so tantalising, because you could just about see them moving around and you could hear them playing but at the same time you knew that they were just holding themselves back from being so much more intense.

And then they were. As the second song finished they launched straight into ‘Brennisteinn’, a track for which they pulled out all the stops when it came to power, and as they did so, the curtain dropped to the floor in a perfectly timed movement, revealing the stage and band behind it.

The first thing that struck me was how many of them there were – I counted eleven in total, despite there being only three official band members these days, and even more impressive was that a lot of them played a range of instruments as the concert drew on. The stage was literally packed with equipment and it was really quite surprising they were able to move around. But as well as the instruments, there were a good twenty old fashioned lanterns scattered around the stage, looking exactly like giant candles, creating a great atmosphere, more personal, less artificial and more eye-catching than the huge, brightly coloured swirling lights that changed colour every so often and shone down on everyone from above the stage.

The headline act themselves didn’t play for much more than an hour and a half, but they packed everything they possibly could into that time. There was very little talking and the breaks between songs were short, which meant you never really came back down to reality after all the crazy places the music was taking you. I was impressed that they managed to keep the atmosphere, and the audience’s attention, for pretty much the whole time without a break, whether the focus was on the video screens at the back or the lights at the front or the players themselves.

I thought the mix of albums that songs came from was pretty excellent. I can’t pronounce any of the titles and so couldn’t tell anyone what the songs were, but was able to think to myself ‘Ah, that’s the hoppy song from the tacky album…’ and keep a relatively good idea of what was going on (of course, I’m talking about ‘Hoppipolla’ from Takk…’) They played quite a lot of songs from the new album, as well as a good (and fairly similar) amount of older stuff. This was good for two reasons: firstly, I think the new album is definitely one of their best, and secondly, there was a great balance of moods and styles, between the untarnished magical beauty of their early music and the darker intensity of what they’ve been doing recently. 1997’s ‘Von’ was the only album that didn’t get a look in, and although it would have been nice to tick off all of them, there’s nothing I would have wanted taken out in order to include something from there.

I was disappointed when they left the stage after playing the main set that we hadn’t heard anything at all from ‘Agaetis byrjun’, which has so many great songs on it, but when they returned to play the (first) encore, Jonsi Birgisson quietly stated that they were now going to play something that they hadn’t played live in years, and it turned out to be… the title track from that album! Which is only my favourite from the entire thing. So, that was an incredibly welcome surprise, and to finish off we were treated with a stunning extended rendition of ‘Popplagio’, which I’d probably have to pick as the highlight, obvious choice as it may be, because of how they all so masterfully handled the song’s build up, turning it into a spectacular concert finish.

So overall, it probably wasn’t what I expected, because I expected them to have Something, some sort of strange gimmick that made their concerts different to everyone else’s and that got people to remember them. What I actually got was better. They didn’t do anything flashy, they just played their music the best they possibly could and let it speak for themselves. And for those ninety minutes, it was really easy to forget that you were standing in the middle of a large hall in a conference centre in Brighton. You could just as easily have been in Sigur Rós’ home land of Iceland, lying under an unpolluted night sky, or any number of other beautiful places that I’ve never been to and possibly never will. But for one evening, Sigur Rós made that feel possible. That’s the thing that sets them apart.

After the concert, I walked to the hotel next door and got into bed. It was the shortest journey back from a concert ever.

[REQUEST] Gorgoroth: Antichrist

Antichrist

Best song: …there’s a best song? okay, Gorgoroth

Worst song: Possessed By Satan

Overall grade: 1

[Author’s note: Because everything conspires against this site, my excuse of the week is illness. Also, an apology for what I reviewed here. It was a request. I hope never to be asked to review anything else by the band. >.>]

Gorgoroth are a Norwegian black metal band named after an evil place in Lord of the Rings, which I’ve seen once and don’t entirely remember. They’ve released about nine albums and use, variously, English, Norwegian and Latin words for their song titles. Lots of black metal fans hold the band’s first three albums (of which this is the second) as a defining example of the genre, and truthfully, this album is outstanding in many ways. For example, if it was supposed to be a way of making sure you never got any visitors, it would be excellent. Similarly, it might be good at scaring people into doing whatever you want. It would probably even do nicely as an insect repellent. However, as an album of music, to be listened to, enjoyed and analysed, it falls short in several key ways.

The first problem is, let’s be honest, with the word ‘music’. I imagine ‘Antichrist’ would be highly enjoyable for anyone who really, really can’t stand music. When I listen to it, I feel the need to have the sound turned right down low for fear of being overwhelmed by feelings of despair that anybody could actually make this.

Really, this is more of an EP than an album, since there are only five tracks that are longer than 20 seconds, and the total length is twenty-five minutes. Even if this album did have a strong concept or musical flow, we’re not really given enough time to get into it here. The first twenty seconds are entitled the Norwegian equivalent of ‘A Rank Smell of Christian Blood’, which is probably simultaneously the worst and most offensive song title I’ve ever heard, and this quality is second only to the song itself, which consists solely of distorted animal noises, and is quite plainly the shortest overlong track in existence.

Track two is entitled ‘Mountain Troll’s Revenge’, which could easily be setting us up for an entertainingly cheesy slice of fantasy rock, but it’s not to be. Actually, the riff that’s played at the beginning isn’t all that heavy at all and could almost be catchy, but it’s repeated and sped up to death until you’re so sick of it that even the vocals become preferable. And the vocals would very rarely be preferable, considering they contain no actual melody, and are rasped so much that it’s impossible to make out the lyrics.

The third track (named after the band themselves) actually does have some sort of melody that I can just about hear in the background, but all the weird distortion noises in the front completely drown it out, so you’re always stretching for it and never reaching it, which is highly unsatisfying. As time goes on, the melody comes more into play, and there’s a folk influence hiding in there, which probably makes it the most tolerable of the songs here. ‘Possessed By Satan’ is the worst, though. Allegedly, it has a different vocalist to the previous two, but I wouldn’t have noticed without being told; they sound like generic unclean vocals to me, of the kind that can work well in moderation but that are seriously overused here. It’s serious filler, indistinguishable from the dullest parts of any other song, and has no redeeming features that I can see.

I imagine that if this band were to make a good song, it would be an instrumental, but there’s just not enough variety in ‘Heavens Fall’ to make it so. Extreme heaviness works best, in my opinion, when it’s got something to contrast with, to be heavier than. When it’s all the same, there’s no benchmark and no progression, and the track doesn’t seem to vary its emotions, just staying dark and militaristic and crushing the whole time.

Final track ‘Sorrow’ is slowed down and sounds like a funeral march, like they got really tired after all the fast stuff, the chanting in the background helping with that mood. Much like the last song, there’s a deliberate, controlled beat keeping it together, and, well, often not much else. I don’t know if the drums and guitar actually recorded this whole piece or if they just recorded two bars and copy and  pasted them a hundred times. The worst part is that the guitar player actually seems to have talent. He just doesn’t make the most of it.

There’s also a bonus track! It’s about ten seconds of running water. It’s a grand artistic statement. No, I’m just kidding, it really is nothing but running water.

“Music”, “tunes”, and other air quoted things aside, I guess one of Gorgoroth’s defining characteristics is their subject matter. Now, I respect freedom of speech and therefore, if a band wants to write exclusively about medieval Satanism, they can, even if I personally don’t agree with it at all. However, Gorgoroth do this thing where they refuse to release their song lyrics to the public, and I suspect it has something to do with them not actually being that good. I mean, they’re hardly the first band to make the whole devil-worshipping thing their trademark, and to keep it in any way creative there has to be a certain amount of lyrical talent. I can’t say for sure, but from what I can hear and what I can infer, I’d guess that there is none.

All in all, I couldn’t ever recommend this album to anyone, even if I didn’t like them. The moments of vague pleasantness are so few and far between that they’re probably accidental and what I most enjoy about listening to it is counting the seconds until it ends.

The thing is, black metal is not the type of music I listen to. Some people like it, though. I can understand the face that some people enjoy music that is incredibly heavy, raw and dark, and puts power and intensity above melody – that’s just personal preferences. I can even understand that to some people, the subject matter of the album is interesting. What I can’t get over is the sheer repetitiveness of everything here. Every musical idea contained within could be squashed into the length of a standard single and I wouldn’t feel like I was being deprived of anything: heavy cannot be a substitute for interesting.

Roxy Music: For Your Pleasure

For Your Pleasure

Best song: For Your Pleasure

Worst song: you’re implying that there’s a bad song on this album? there isn’t of course, but let’s say Beauty Queen

Overall grade: 7

It’s been forty years since 1973, and not one of them has come close to topping the number of exciting, innovative, near-perfect albums that were put out that year. Roxy Music trailblazed here, getting their second album out in the first quarter of the year, and actually going above and beyond to put out another one before the year was over. Despite this, there’s nothing at all rushed about any of this work. If anything, it feels more carefully put-together than ever.

‘Roxy Music’ and ‘For Your Pleasure’ are, in my opinion, two halves of the same double album that just happened to be released at different times. ‘Roxy Music’ is the late afternoon and the early evening, where people are poised and careful and there’s an anticipation of what’s to come, and ‘For Your Pleasure’ had moved onto the late night where everything is wilder, sexier and more dangerous. You can even see this just by looking at the album covers, and there’s all kinds of links between the two in song titles and musical ideas as well.

‘Do The Strand’ is an intense and passionate opener that sums up the essence of Roxy Music for me; there’s some great texture in all the instruments and Ferry sounds so involved in his vocal performance. It’s only four minutes long, but has the feel of a much longer song all packed together into a shorter length, and it never takes a moment to find its way – it knows exactly where it’s going and powers through to get there as fast as possible.

Both ‘Beauty Queen’ and ‘Strictly Confidential take things in an entirely different direction, slowing the pace right down and allowing more time to show off the band’s talents. Ferry certainly demonstrates to anyone who didn’t already know his capability of adding copious amounts of emotion into his vocals on ‘Beauty Queen’, a song that some people consider too ‘normal’ – but in actual fact there’s a lot of weird stuff going on in the synth and guitar parts, they’re just not such a blatant part of the song. They are there, though, quietly resisting the vocals’ insistence on becoming a straight up love song. ‘Strictly Confidential’ is a definite highlight on both lyrics and atmosphere, and I love the role the sax plays in this.

If Roxy Music had been going to release a single from this album at the time, then my pick is for ‘Editions of You’, the definitive fusion of pop and art rock, with foot-tapping rhythms, hooks everywhere, amazing solos from pretty much every member of the band. It’s one of those songs that succeeds in being instantly likeable but also has a lot of long-lasting appeal. If it had been released in the 90s, it would probably have its own dance.

But if they were going to release a retrospective single, then what could be more recognisable than ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’? I mean, how many songs can you think of that are about inflatable sex dolls? Personally, I can think of two (some people might think that’s two too many) and this is definitely my favourite. It’s almost an inside joke, the way everything seems so cinematic and melodramatic at first even despite the subject matter, and Ferry’s singing this love poem as though he’s entirely serious about it, right up to the ‘I blew up your body…’ line, and then gives up all pretence at the punchline ‘…but you blew my mind’, and then it’s like nobody else can keep a straight face any more as all the instruments cascade in at once. It’s genius.

There’s a dreamlike, surreal quality to the first few minutes of ‘Bogus Man’, which definitely ties into this being a nighttime album: it’s like that feeling when it gets so late that nothing seems real anymore. Its rhythm seems to predate the Talking Heads, who Eno would of course go on to work with, but that’s not the only foreshadowing of Eno’s later work; the hypnotic, repeated phrases are exactly the same principle that he would take to extremes with his ambient work. Then, ‘Grey Lagoons’ is a 50s-style song with an inimitable solo from Phil Manzanera that tends to get overlooked because of its position on the album, but definitely holds its own by rocking out between the two epics of the side.

Course, absolutely everything else is leading up to the pure indulgence of the title track, where the vocals are rich and the piano is lavish and the whole song is a special treat that never really gets moving because it doesn’t need to; it’s perfectly OK with just lazing around and getting the absolute most out of everything it has to offer. Still, it has that unsettling feeling that something’s not quite right beneath the surface, keeping you alert, making every second of the song fascinating. Eno may not have a writing credit but he’s all over this song in the haze of synths coating it and steps forward to take his bow in the experimental section that closes it all out. If such a thing were possible, then I’d say this song knows just how good it is.

Though that may be the culmination of it all, every part of this album is essential, and I wouldn’t want to change a thing about it.

And so ends the altogether too brief period of Eno’s Roxy Music, which can overall only be described as one of the most successful genre mishmashes of all time. Eno would go on to have an incredibly impressive good-to-bad ratio in his string of song-based solo albums as well as invent an entire genre of music before the decade was over. Roxy Music, meanwhile, would stay together with Ferry coming to the front more than ever before, and within months would release the album that most people consider to be their best. Personally, although the first time I heard ‘For Your Pleasure’ was before I heard ‘Stranded’, I was pretty confident even then that they couldn’t release an album greater than this one.

David Bowie: The Man Who Sold The World

The Man Who Sold The World

Best song: The Width of a Circle

Worst song: She Shook Me Cold

Overall grade: 4

Following the success of the single ‘Space Oddity’, David Bowie started trying to put together a more stable group of musicians to work with. This group would then go on to become one of the most famous backing bands of any musician, ever (save for Bob Dylan). Yes, this album does indeed feature a very rough blueprint for what was to become the Spiders from Mars. Micks Ronson and Woodmansey make their first appearance on this album, and Trevor Bolder was the only missing link… but that’s later. For now, we’re just talking about this album, which, although clearly a vital step in Bowie’s evolution, is overlooked and even criticised by fans as often as it is praised.

So, where do I stand on this album that divides the opinions of those who actually remember it exists? Well, I like it. Truth be told I liked it quite a bit more before I found out that Bowie himself wasn’t massively involved in the songwriting process. Maybe that factor shouldn’t be such an influence on my opinion, but it is. David Bowie is one of the most creative and imaginative men in music, and for him – or any musician, for that matter – to put his name on a project, I’d hope that he’d want to have written a set of songs he was really happy with, and that he thought were the best he could write, rather than make a start and then hand the job over to somebody else. Maybe I’m just idealistic.

I’m not going to surprise anyone with my pick for best song here. Opener ‘The Width of a Circle’ is as good as it gets – so good, that one particularly devoted fan in Russia pressed so many copies of it onto 7” that lots of people think it was released as an actual, official single. Don’t be fooled by the 1970 release date. This song has the open, anything-goes kind of quality that makes one think of the 60s, and the second part has a space rock quality that almost reminds me of Hawkwind. Hearing Bowie, generally regarded as a camped-up glam rock singer, try his voice at the heavy metal influenced song might seem like a bit of a stretch, but his voice fits in surprisingly well. There’s some spacey atmospherics in the wobbly guitar solo passage between the first two verses, and the lyrics… ‘And the rumour spread that I was aging fast/Then I ran across a monster who was sleeping by a tree/And I looked and frowned and the monster was me’. Or, I could just quote the entire song. Yes, sleeping with the devil in Hell might sound like dubious subject matter and it’s certainly not the kind of thing I’d expect to enjoy a song about, but there are so many excellent lyrical turns of phrase here that I’m forced to have a lot of respect for the way it’s written.

OK, let’s talk about some of the other songs. This album doesn’t have a concept like ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and doesn’t even flow like ‘Hunky Dory’ but most of the songs are worth checking out, and they do continue to prove Bowie’s often underrated lyrical talents. Seriously, sometimes I think this album could hold up well if you just read the lyrics booklet, and the only other people who can do that are Bob Dylan and Jarvis Cocker. ‘All the Madmen’ carries things on in an equally progressive style with creepy vocals and a guitar opening full of anticipation. Its more stripped back arrangement means it acts as a counterpoint to the first song, but it also builds as it goes on, giving it status on its own. I’m a big fan of the spoken word section in the middle that comes out of nowhere, where the band forget to play for a bit, surprising the listener and making the song memorable and unique. It’s the Syd Barrett song that Barrett never wrote.

‘Black Country Rock’ is not one of my favourites; its blues-rock influence is a bit too overpowering for my tastes, and the hook I hear while I listen to it is lying about being a hook, because it isn’t any kind of memorable. The quietly intense ‘After All’ is more my kind of thing, setting Bowie’s whispered, world-weary vocals against the more innocent and choral sound in the background.

I’ll be dull and predictable again in saying that my least favourite track is ‘She Shook Me Cold’, because it just ad no structure… seriously, most jam sessions are better organised than this song, which is nowhere near album-worthy. It feels like it’s trying to be great art but coming off as a bit of a mess. ‘Saviour Machine’ is nothing particularly special either, and ‘Running Gun Blues’ is notable for being the heaviest song, a bit psychotic in places, interesting enough but more controversial than it is good.

 The title track is probably most famous for being covered by Nirvana in the early 90s, but I can think of much better versions. Namely, this one. More than anything else on the record, this is a pop song, and Ronson provides us with a wonderful guitar hook just to prove that point. Closer ‘The Supermen’ is probably the most obvious nod to Bowie’s sci-fi leanings, sounding alternately cold, futuristic and otherworldly, and it’s another bullseye in my book. Its fantastical qualities elevate an otherwise averagely good song to epic status. Another powerful vocal over the grandiose instrumentation bring the album to a crashing, explosive finish that’s well worth the disappointing moments.

So yeah. They say the only constant in life is change, and that’s definitely true of Bowie’s life. It doesn’t matter how much you like or dislike any one album of his, you always know that the next one’s going to be completely different.

Ouch, I haven’t reviewed anything ridiculously positive for quite a while. Tomorrow or Thursday I’ll give something a 7.

I also haven’t been particularly controversial about anything in a while… that’s coming. Oh, it’s coming.

The Who: Who Are You

Who Are You

Best song: Who Are You

Worst song: Love Is Coming Down

Overall grade: 4

[author’s note: wow, major delays on this one. I didn’t really think about the fact that I was travelling over the past couple of weeks and so wouldn’t really be able to write anything. I’m now doing NaNoWriMo, a ridiculous competition to write a 50,000 word novel in a month that I do every year, so that’s keeping me busy too. I’ll update sporadically (read: 2-3 times/week) this month and then daily in December.]

Music is not the only thing in my life that I’m slightly obsessive over. You wouldn’t think I had the time to be fanatical about anything else, but the truth is, I can name every single episode of the original CSI: Las Vegas, in order, unprompted. It’s a useless talent but a good party trick. Based on the statistic that I’ve seen each episode an average of 2.5 times, that means I’ve seen around 750 viewings of the opening credits, which equals 750 renditions of the theme tune, The Who’s ‘Who Are You’.

Yet when I listen to this album as a whole, I’m always pleasantly surprised by what a great song it actually is. Sure, that 15-second edit is enjoyable, but the full 6-minute version has to stand alongside ‘it’. and ‘Starless’ as one of the best sendoffs to an era of a band, ever. It’s final proof that Pete Townshend keeps getting better and better at lyrics, as he tells the tale of a night out drinking gone wrong: ‘I spit out like a sewer hole/Yet still recieve your kiss/How can I measure up to anyone now/After such a love as this?’. He’s come a long way since ‘your lies, lies, la-la-la-la-la-la-lies’. This song also marks Keith Moon’s only truly inspired drum work on the album, as well as being a delicate masterpiece with a synthesizer stitched seamlessly in and out of the other instruments. Minimalist in places, thick and heavy in others, it captures Townshend’s mindset and proved to everyone that the Who weren’t dinosaurs quite yet.

The album also has some interesting tracks which have not yet become soundtracks for major crime dramas, and these include fan favourite ‘Guitar and Pen’, a very meta song about the whole songwriting process. I like most of it, I especially like Roger on this one, but I can’t deal with the closing section that’s an embarrassing failed attempt at prog. Another is the opener, ‘New Song’, which is, as the title suggests, a new song. It’s powerful and very listenable but lacks the substance of the best material from this album and its predecessor.

So, neatly dividing Pete’s songs into two fantastic, two good and two awful, there’s also ‘Music Must Change’. Jazz influences, blues influences, and a more successful prog influence than that mentioned earlier combine to make a song that displays its message incredibly well even if you ignore the lyrics, and although there are no drums, that may actually be a good thing here – how else could you appreciate all the little twists and turns of the song? It’s all very insightful with highly emotional playing from everyone, and a highly satisfying closer for the first side.

Pete Townshend has referred to ‘Sister Disco’ as being one of his least favourite songs to perform, and I’m pretty much in agreement with him on that. It’s a vapid and obvious criticism of the disco music that was just becoming popular in 1978, and while its message may have resonated with listeners back then, it has little relevance now and there are no strokes of genius in the music to help it age. I also struggle to tolerate ‘Love Is Coming Down’ which seems insincerely soppy, and doesn’t engage me at all, unlike some of the Who’s previous ballads, and could probably be improved by a good pounding on the old drum kit to make it rock a bit, if Moon was still up to it.

With the exception of ‘Quadrophenia’, John Entwhistle has contributed a song to every Who album, but here he gets a massive three. That’s a third of the total number of tracks. Was Pete Townshend beginning to cool off from wanting to be in total control, or did he just lack inspiration? I’m generally a big fan of Entwhistle’s work but ‘Trick of the Light’ is certainly not one of his best efforts; it’s a formulaic song with little energy that’s barely worthy of being a remaster bonus track. On both that song and ‘905’, Entwhistle attempts to return to his ‘Boris the Spider’ past and write about more quirky subject matter – ‘Trick’, with its description of an impotent man’s encounter with a prostitute, leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but the science, futuristic vibe of ‘905’ definitely brings a smile and a flicker of the past. The synthesizer dances along and suddenly making music seems like fun rather than work as Pete messes around with electronics and John twiddles with an organ. It’s filler-ish, but it’s very good fun filler.

His final track, and the first one I’d pick for inclusion on a ‘Best of John Entwhistle’ compilation, is ‘Had Enough’. I love its apathetic, dark lyrics and the way they carry through to the music. Interestingly for a Who song, it features a few guests, including Ted Astley arranging the song, Rod Argent on keyboards and a full string orchestra, making it feel fresh compared to the rest of the album but still with enough trademarks to be recognisably Who.

Listening to this album makes it clear that Pete, Roger and John all still have the talent, but that the group as a complete unit is showing cracks. Keith Moon’s problems with drugs and alcohol were taking their toll on everyone, and none of the members are as involved as they once were, and some of the songs really do suffer for it. That said, at this point the Who had a point to prove: that they weren’t going to give up just because there were new music fashions around now. I think that there are enough good songs on the record to back up that assertion, and although it’s a shame that Keith’s farewell record didn’t feature a better performance from him, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that he never had to listen to ‘It’s Hard’.