Pete Townshend

It's almost impossible to avoid describing Rough Mix as devotional music, but it's equally
difficult to reconcile that description with some of the album's components. Townshend's
stinging guitar on "My Baby Gives It Away," the chugging. Faces-like title instrumental and
the wailing saxophone coda on Lane's Fifties-style "Catmelody" are hardly typical of
spiritual music. But then matters meditative have never before been fully integra... More >

Meher Baba inspired psalmody so plain and sharply observed, maybe he was all reet after all. Three of Townshend's contributions--"Keep Me Turning," "Misunderstood," and an unlikely song of adoration called "My Baby Gives It Away"--are his keenest in years, and while Lane's evocations of the passing scene are more poignant on his Island import, One for the Road, "Annie" is a suitably modest folk classic. Together, the two disciples prove that charity needn't be sentimental, detachment cold, nor peace boring. Selah. (Grade: A-)