Sunday, October 01, 2006
Pete Townshend
Empty Glass
White City: A Novel
Hip-O/UME
By David Chiu
Just as the Who is about to release its first new studio album in nearly 25 years, two excellent Pete Townshend solo records from 1979 and 1986 were recently reissued.
Empty Glass (1979) has been regarded as Townshend’s best solo work—it was rock’s elder statesman answer to the angry young punks who saw the Who as dinosaurs. In an ironic way, punk music seem to have freed Townshend creatively as rockers like Jools and Jim and the title track seem to indicate. Right off the bat Townshend’s goes swinging with the highly-charged “Rough Boys”; that track and the atmospheric “And I Moved” contain lyrics that seem to hint at homosexuality (“Tough boys/Come over here/I wanna bite and kiss you,” on the former, and “And I moved/And his hands felt like ice exciting” on the latter—sort of revolutionary for its time in retrospect. “Empty Glass” also contains Townshend’s most popular solo tune, the ditty “Let My Love Open My Door.” Empty Glass showed that Townshend and the Who as a whole were not finished in the era of punk. The album’s bonus tracks include alternate versions of “I Am an Animal,” “Keep On Working” and “And I Moved.”
White City: A Novel (1986), based on a concept from a film, is a varied but tuneful album. Being that it is a concept record, one would imagine pointless interludes, inscrutable filler and arty ambitions gone awry, but White City is cohesive and packs a wollop. It’s a lean and direct rock album with some choice cuts: the jump blues of the catchy and excellent “Face to Face”; the driving numbers “Secondhand Love” and “Give Blood”; and a little reggae-like funk in “Hiding Out.” White City is an underrated gem that deserves another listen. The bonus tracks on this reissue include an acoustic version of the English Beat’s “Save It For Later.”
# posted by NewBeats @ 6:06 AM 
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