Album Review: “It’s Hard” By The Who

Post-Keith Moon, The Who already readied themselves from constant buggering of disbandment or the threat that they will never release another great album due to them being crippled in manpower. Thus was the fate of the band’s tenth album, It’s Hard, which was released in 1982. The tracks in this album were either written by Pete Townshend or John Entwistle, although the majority of them belonged to the axman.

In terms of actual content nutrition, the album is a bit of a hit and miss. “Eminence Front” doesn’t rush things with its simmering cacophony of synths that are adorned with guitar accents, Townshend taking lead vocal role in the song. The title song is an excellent rocker, with Roger Daltrey taking back his place on the mic and dishing out some nifty wordplay, while the chorus has a great swell of sound packed with a catchy lyric to boot. Another great cut is “Athena”, a radio favorite thanks to its themes of romance and conflict while “A Man is A Man” has Townshend alluding to his spiritual guide Meher Baba, abandoning all physical notions of masculinity and instead replaces it with intangible factors. “Dangerous” is the sole cut from Entwistle that is on par with the better Townshend tracks in the album, an effective rocker that has a looming atmosphere of uneasiness hanging over it.

This was the last album of the Who for a good 24 years, not to mention Entwistle’s last as he passed away in 2002. Still, it sheds a light on how the band tried to cope up with new material in the absence of one of their key members.