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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Who's Final Anthem, March 13, 2004
"I hate it!" was lead singer Roger Daltrey's opinion of "It's Hard," The Who's last studio album to date. This was in stark contrast to Pete Townshend's view; the guitarist/songwriter seemed eager about the album and felt that The Who had been musically born again and revitalized. The same difference between the opinions of Daltrey and Townshend appeared among critics and fans. Rolling Stone called "It's Hard" The Who's best since "Who's Next," while others were less impressed. Some fans ate it up, others quickly spit it out. Whether all of this has anything to do with the fact that The Who hasn't recorded another studio album since then or not, "It's Hard" is a headstrong album that contains as much angst, bitterness, and determination as their most heraled albums.
"It's Hard" is identifiably 80s, considering the synthesizers that fill the album; but it should be noted that The Who were among the first to innovate the use of the synthesizer in the first place (see "Who's Next," recorded eleven years earlier). But the range of emotions overwhelm even the synthesizers. The entire album is an anthem. The Who's instantly recognizable contempt for the fact that they were getting older is obvious; Roger Daltrey belts bassist John Entwistle's words in 'It's Your Turn,' "I was a face in a magazine/When you were still playing with your plasticine." Also evident is the group's disenchantment with the emptiness of the 1982 music scene, as they state in the title track "Any kid can chatter, few can inform. It's hard..." Much of the material here is catchy, even when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, examples being the bar band-like 'One At a Time' and the more accessible 'Why Did I Fall For That,' 'Cooks County,' and 'Eminence Front,' the closest thing to an audience-embraced hit on the album...except of course the opener 'Athena.'
There are four bonus tracks on this remaster of "It's Hard," all of them recorded live. These concert tracks, especially the title song, reveal to the audience the true anthemic purposes of this album. Another studio release from The Who would have been great, but for the time being, we are left with "It's Hard" as their studio swan song, and frankly it doesn't get much better than this.
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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An awesome and unfairly maligned early Eighties album, July 23, 2004
This was the last Who studio album I purchased, a fact that may have influenced my love for it. I'd been waiting a long time for it, had to specially order it from one of the music stores in my college town after having waited in vain for ages for it to show up on its own, and ended up paying $17.84, which is a rather high price for a CD in one of the music stores in Amherst, MA! After waiting so long, it had better be good. Even after it was in my hands and I was back in my room, I had to spend what felt like fifteen or twenty minutes trying to pry the CD out of the jewel case; it was screwed in so tightly I was afraid it might break. In addition to this long wait, I had already heard all of the negative hype surrounding it and was expecting something at least mediocre, if not outright bad. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised when I fell in love with it upon the very first note. Probably a lot of older fans hated it because they were unfairly comparing it to their great masterpieces which had gone before, and the fact that they didn't like Kenney Jones's drumming. As a younger fan, I had more of a historical perspective on it. (This album was released a few months before I turned three, but I can't recall having heard any of these songs on the radio at the time; it may have been made in my lifetime, but I was a bit too young to remember it and thus was able to come to it in early adulthood with a blank slate.)
This album is a thousand times better than FD. The only song on IH I don't like is "Why Did I Fall for That?" The others are pulsating and alive with energetic music, upbeat, interesting, touching, sometimes political lyrics, top-notch vocals, all-around great quality. It's a great series of statements about some of the things going on in the early Eighties. A lot of fans hate "A Man Is a Man" and "One Life's Enough," but I love both of those songs (perhaps because I'm a female fan and most Who freaks are men); the latter song is incredibly lush, beautiful, and erotic. It might not be as well-known as the New Wave records that were so common in this era, but I think it's aged better, and besides, how many albums put out in 1982 are still remembered today?
The bonus tracks suffer from the same problem as the three bonus tracks on WBN--they're just live versions of songs we just heard earlier on the album (though WBN features one live song that wasn't on that album but a hit from several years ago), not unreleased material that, in the case of a number of their other albums, doubled the length when they were reissued. But the bonus tracks here are more exciting, with great onstage dialogue; the CD reissue even manages to end with the same song that the original LP did, only in a live version. "Cry If You Want" is such a powerful and emotional early Eighties classic, a perfect album closer either live or in a studio version, and most of all a fantastic swan song.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very underrated WHO Album, July 19, 2005
This Album was slammed by Roger Daltery himself, who said that other than Eminence Front, it should not have come out. It was not one of the WHO's more successful LPs, reaching only #8 and going gold but not platinum. Still, it is very underrated and has held up very well over the years. First, Eminence Front, one of the 2 or 3 greatest Who songs, is worth the price of admission here. Second, there are several other worthwhile songs, most notably Athena, a top 40 single, the Title track, and John Entwistle's compositions, especially Dangerous. Actually, John Entwistle wrote the best material on the WHO's last three albums, not only because his material is good in its own right, but because Pete was saving the best material for his solo albums- see Empty Glass and All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes. Face it, the WHO never made a bad record, and this LP, initially criticized, has aged extremely well. Strongly recommended.
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