But Endless Wire, even as it pops in and out of these mental wormholes, is a musical experience, and musical directness is the gift Pete Townshend was given to compensate him for being such a difficult bastard. This is definitely a “mature” sound — sad/proud tunes are the rule, drums skip and flutter, and now and then a ukulele clucks like a benevolent ghost. In its tasteful bareness it rather recalls The Who by Numbers. Daltrey fiercely pumps the aged bellows of his voice, sounding more committed than he has since about 1973: his performance on “Man in a Purple Dress,” Pete’s rebuttal to those who condemned him during his little computer fiasco in 2002 (he was arrested for downloading images of child porn — for research, he said — but not charged), is a windy triumph. “How dare you be the one to assess/Me in this godforsaken mess . . . ?”: it’s moving to hear Daltrey raggedly boosting his old pal thus. The very beautiful piano ballad “In the Ether” is sung by Townshend in two voices, one a blubbery Waitsian parody, the other his own, full of naked pathos. And “Mike Post Theme” straightforwardly salutes the TV composer Mike Post and the twinkling everydayness of his music — “Late at night in the underground train/Through endless suburbs and endless pain/Deep in the tunnel under the London rain/Suddenly we hear Mike Post again.” One imagines that Mr. Post (Hill Street Blues, The Rockford Files) must be rather gratified by this.

And then we come to the opera. Show-tune moments, twanging hooks, rushing percussion, crescendos and caprice, total Who-ness. I’ve no idea what it’s about, but the slow, drum-programmed closer, “Tea and Theatre,” is the most moving Daltrey vocal since “How Many Friends Have I Really Got?”: “Will you have some tea, at the theatre with me?/We did it all, didn’t we? . . . All of us sad, lean on my shoulder now/The story is done.”

Is the story done? These two seniors have shown us that they can come treading out of the dim vales of rock-and-roll dotage with a more than effective album. And it’s clear Pete Townshend will never cease his proboscine probing of the ineffable, his search for the one true note. They might do it again, they might not. I can’t resist: Who knows?

ADVERTISEMENT