Jerk Music Critic: Truancy: The Very Best of Pete Townshend

The latest and least accomplished (or awaited) of Pete Townshend's solo career compilations, this disc makes the minimum out of relatively mediocre material. No one was asking for a new retread of previously released cuts, and most of what is on this album is exactly what you've heard before, namely a few commercial hits (notably an unjustifiably truncated "Let My Love Open The Door"), Who reject tracks ("Pure And Easy," though this obesely overproduced version is inferior to the session castoff on the extended Who's next re-releases), and a surfeit of the inexplicable that he really, really wants to be meaningful. Highlights of that last include the openly homoerotic "Rough Boys" that would be playful if it weren't so obvious, the appealing if overly cute by half "Sheraton Gibson," several listenable cuts from the adventurous but impenetrable All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (in particular the dissonant yet lyric "The Sea Refuses No River"), and the surprisingly strong "English Boy" with Daltryesque vocals that could have come off a Who revival album from a parallel universe. The lowlights overwhelm them, though, in particular the lacklustre and uninspired ("Let's See Action," "My Baby Gives It Away," "Face the Face"), the cloyingly overnostalgic ("You Came Back," though it has its charms and twists), the incomprehensible ("Keep Me Turning") and the execrably pointless — as embodied by "A Heart To Hang On To," its warmed-over lyrics worsened by smarmy lukewarm rock. We end on an even lower note with two unreleased tracks ("Guantanamo" and "How Can I Help You") that, complete with their phlegmy old-rocker vocals, frankly should have stayed that way. Much like Roger Waters' career arc towards the end of and then post-Pink Floyd, Townshend's fatally overwrought artistic aspirations could not be contained by the Who, and during his solo outings could not be contained by anything. Despite praiseworthy studio effort we're left with a corpus of works that by their sheer level of autoindulgence mostly only appeal to their creator. Townshend's inveterately inscrutable songsmithing was certainly nowhere near as acrid as Waters' output, and that is a blessed relief, but as this limp collection demonstrates it was also no less tedious. (Content: some adult themes.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

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A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.