THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS

The Who

Who POLYDOR

First new album in 13 years might be a lively last hurrah.

Pete Townshend has always come across as a prickly character, hiding his artistic sensitivity with defensive strops. It’s that awkward, tough-tender ambivalence which makes this potential swansong – 55 years since The Who’s debut – infinitely more intriguing than many late-life albums. The thinker in him keeps stressing that rock’s dead (opening track All This Music Must Fade ends with a resigned “Who gives a fuck?”). Yet the doer in him keeps doing it. His motivation to deliver a new album was “personal”, a desire to prove to himself that he could still write while avoiding nostalgia (something the Peter Blake cover, a riot of retro-longing, wallows in).

The limply titled is a crisp set of songs, shrewdly finding the sweet spot between serrated and slick. Roger Daltrey, for his part, sounds vibrant, the odd, affectionate antipathy between writer and singer once again lending their interface an edge. D Sardy (known, worryingly, for Oasis and Noel Gallagher) co-produces with Townshend. Some over-buffed patches call to mind the growing