BY NUMBERS

After three incredible strikes and hits, could we expect The Who to eternally give us major works like Tommy, and Quadrophenia? Well the group certainly chose to let off steam and produced another concept album, and this one's goal was to relax and take it easy and quit with the pretension and ambitions of the previous projects. Instead we are given a bunch of songs, apparently unrelated, but the lyrics are pondering the group's different (Pete's mostly) moods and draw a bittersweet conclusion about success and loneliness. It came with an amusing artwork, but ultimately everything about this album is meant to be a breath- catching phase.

Indeed the two hits that came from the album are fairly shallow and under par: both Slip Kids and Squeeze Both tracks are too slick and lack depth in the music (compared to the Quadro's sophistication or Tommy's borrowings to classical), even though the lyrics seem of a very personal nature. It's hard to fault only the songwriting here (all Townshend except the noisy under-par Entwistle-penned Success Story), but it's more that the group didn't seem to believe in them and didn't arranged the song's frame and even regular guest Nicky Hopkins sounds restrained on the first track. However I Booze is one of those tracks where it's evident that Townshend is anything but happy (despite Daltrey's singing) and the semi- country rock guitar is anything but pleasant for progheads, but the "middle section" (where Pete sings) is much finer-tuned. In the slow acoustic Imagine A Man and Blue Red & Grey, one has to wonder what this is doing on a group album instead of a solo album, especially the later and Pete's banjo or ukulele.

On the positive side, there are one or two tracks where the group still struts their stuff: and Dreaming From The Waist is one of them, with Moon's incessant drum attack and Townshend excellent guitar work. The other is How Many Friends, a track that wouldn't be out of place on Who's Next, with finally plenty of dynamics, just what they'd gotten us used to. Good stuff, but nothing worth writing home about, but worthy of a selection on a home compilation. I'll also mention the closing In A Hand that's reminiscent of Quadrophenia and Moon's crazyyyyy drumming.

Certainly not on par with the three predecessor (and even more, IMHO), Numbers is a strange transitional album that was to signal the end of mega who projects and it would be followed by a lengthy 3 years silence. Personally I think this album is less interesting than Odds & Sods, because the way both album's track spectrum is the same (ranging from 68 to 73), thus allowing the comparison) and BN suffers from being the rest of the "bottom-of-drawer" of O&S. Certainly not essential, not even for fans of the group, but probably not a tad better than I remember it either.

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