The Who

For their second take on the Rock Opera, the Who get deep, examining their roots as Mods and the personality of the band as driven by four individuals. The double album soundtrack, besides thoroughly telling the Who's complex story, contains a number of standout songs ("The Real Me," "5:15," "I'm the One"). It's one of the last truly great albums the Who recorded.

Quadrophenia is the Who at their most symmetrical, their most cinematic, ultimately their
most maddening. Captained by Pete Townshend, they have put together a beautifully
performed and magnificently recorded essay of a British youth mentality in which they
played no little part, lushly endowed with black and white visuals and a heavy sensibility of
the wet-suffused air of 1965. Nonetheless, the album fails to generate a total imp... More >

Unlike Tommy, this one really is a kind of opera--first you get to know the music, then you sit down with the libretto and concentrate for eighty minutes. Even with the synopsis (as brilliant a piece of writing as Townshend's ever done) and lyrics, its account of a young Mod's "double schizophrenia" can be pretty confusing, partly because confusion is his subject. The music is cluttered with horns and unnecessarily shrill, so that--despite its considerable melodic (and motivic, as they say) pizzazz--you don't play it for fun. But if Townshend's great virtue is compassion, this is his triumph--Everykid as heroic f*ckup, smart enough to have a good idea of what's being done to him and so sensitive he gets pushed right out to the edge anyway. (Grade - A-)