WHO'S NEXT

It might not have as many prog elements as TOMMY, but WHO'S NEXT is just a better, more solid album overall in my opinion. It doesn't have all of those stagnant, non-eventful pieces that plagued TOMMY nor are there attempts to try to squeeze an ambitious story out. This is just pure, gutsy, wall-of-sound-to-the-face, no frills hard rock, plain and simple.

The Who seem to have life on this album more so than TOMMY; right from the first guitar chords, there is an immense sense of energy as you're propelled into one of hard rock's finest classics. ''Baba O'Riley'' and ''Won't Get Fooled Again'' need no explanation as they have been constantly (over)played all over radio. But that doesn't mean the rest of the album slacks. Only the ballady bits of ''Song is Over'' and ''Getting in Tune'' are where the album cracks although ''Love Ain't For Keeping'' isn't that strong of a song.

The two finest efforts in my estimation are the two songs without Daltrey's voice. ''My Wife'' is a very strange rock song with punctual brass parts that appears to be Entwistle's baby (it's the only song he gets writing credit for). ''Going Mobile'' might be my favourite song off of the whole album as the synth bits and wah guitar soloing are absolutely fantastic, and Townsend's voice melds with the song perfectly.

This isn't a bad album to check out, especially if you hang on towards the rock side of prog. And hey, I feel ''Won't Get Fooled Again'' has some prog connotations, so it's worth a slight investigation.

Aside from not many prog points, I can't rate WHO'S NEXT as a masterpiece since I feel that it's one of those albums that's so classic it's TOO classic.