FACE DANCES

Panned on release by those who believed that the Who without Keith Moon weren't the Who at all, Face Dances really isn't that much worse than Who Are You - an album on which Moon's participation was incidental at best. The problem is, Who Are You wasn't that great - I consider it to be highly overrated, possibly due to it being Moon's last album before his death. You Better You Bet is a catchy enough song in the vein of Who Are You from the previous album, but like the opening track from the previous album (with its allusions to constantly rewriting "the same old song") the lyrics reveal a bit more than necessary. When you have to namedrop one of your own best albums (Who's Next, in this case) in order to remind people that you're the same band that recorded it, that speaks to a severe lack of confidence in your own current material - and Face Dances isn't an album the Who should have been proud of. It doesn't stink, but it's just incredibly mediocre.