This was The Who' s last album with Keith Moon , before his unfortunate death three weeks after the album's release. By mid-1978, The Who were struggling to remain contemporaneously relevant in the midst of punk, new wave and disco. This album does nothing to change that, being an amalgam of synth riffs and prog rock stylings in places with Roger Daltrey' s dramatic, operatic but from the streets voice starting to sound out of time among the snarl of punk and cynical sneer of new wave. Their previous three albums, Who's Next , Quadrophenia and (lesserly) The Who By Numbers had been excellent, hard-hitting rock albums. Unfortunately, despite the individuals within the band's obvious musical proficiency, this is neither a great nor relevant album. It is still The Who, however, and there are good points to it, which I will highlight, but put in a cultural context, it was sadly a little irrelevant. New Song bursts into action with a synth riff like the sort
