Blogcritics.org
Feb 4 2005

Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out

Posted by Caryn Rose

Filed under: Music, Music: Classic Rock and Oldies, Music: Indie Rock
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Who Sell Out
Petra Haden
Music from Bar None Records
Release date: 22 February, 2005

I became a die-hard Who fan at the age of 15. Did I say die-hard?
More like obsessed, obsessive, consumed, in love with a rock band the
way you can probably only be when you are discovering the world and
your place in it for the first time.

Now, Mike Watt and d.boon (of the late, great Minutemen) were also
die-hard Who fans from a young age, and had a friendship that was
cemented, solidified through their shared love of and for music.
d.boon died in an automobile accident in 1985, and Watt (he’s just
Watt) has continued fighting the good fight and continued making
great music.

Petra Haden: The Who Sell Out is the brainwave of Mike Watt, and was
inspired by his friendship with d.boon and their shared Who
obsession. Watt suggested the idea to Haden, who is a friend and
colleague, and she took on the challenge. The result is what will
definitely be one of the most remarkable albums of the year.

While obsessive fans of any band can sometimes be somewhat rigid and
defensive of the music they love, Who fans are probably some of the
worst offenders on that front. To many of them, there is no other
music worth listening to, and no one, repeat, no one, can touch the
Who’s music. (As an example, for a better part of the 90’s a large
majority of Who fans were up in arms over Eddie Vedder “daring” to
perform the Who’s music and sing Pete Townshend’s songs — of course,
somehow overlooking that he had been invited by Pete himself).

So Petra Haden is one brave woman, taking on the recreation of an
entire Who album, solo. She doesn’t even have brand recognition
working in her favor. If she got one thing, the tiniest, most
miniscule thing wrong with this record, she would be skewered alive.

But there is not one thing out of place on this record, and this is
notable because there is no instrumentation whatsoever on the album.
That’s right, the entire record is performed completely acapella.
Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out is absolutely a cover album in
the classic sense; Haden tracked every single note, every thundering
Entwistle bass note, every rollicking Keith Moon drum roll, every
Townshendian crescendo, every classic Daltrey vocal warble. But the
difference here, and what makes this album so remarkable, is that
every vocal track, every sound effect, every instrument, is created
using Haden’s voice and only her voice, multi-tracked.

This record is nothing less than jaw-dropping brilliant. It’s
astounding. It’s a truly remarkable, joyful musical performance,
while also being the most original idea for a cover album, ever. That
said, part of the album’s brilliance is that the interpretation is
blindingly original, but at the same time, not so inaccessible that
it won’t speak to a larger audience.

As Watt relates in the liner notes, Haden wasn’t particularly
familiar with the album, or with early Who. This is important,
because it means that it wasn’t her all-time favorite record and
lifetime dream to cover it. She has no emotional attachment to the
songs – which you would think would make it lifeless and dull, or at
least lacking energy. But Petra Haden Sings The Who Sell Out is
anything but that. Instead, there is this pervasive pure ebullience
and joy that saturates the record. There is a freshness and a spirit
to the performance, because she hadn’t heard the record her entire
life, it was all new to her.

Now, if you’re familiar at all with The Who Sell Out, you know it’s a
pop art masterpiece, and one of its hallmarks are the radio jingles
that appear in between songs, connective tissue if you will, trying
to simulate what it was like listening to Radio Caroline or any of
the other legendary pirate radio stations stationed off-shore in the
60’s and vital to the British music scene. So it’s not enough already
that she’s singing “I Can See For Miles” and “Armenia City In The
Sky” and “Mary Anne With The Shakey Hands,” Hayden includes every
jingle – Rotosound strings, Heinz baked beans, Track Records – it’s
all here.

Every single song is fascinating, but the most overwhelming
performances have to be “I Can See For Miles” (that droning Townshend
chord-solo is there, too), “Armenia City In The Sky,” and “Sunrise” –
the latter perfectly suited to Haden’s voice – and the top of the
list is “Rael,” Townshend’s first attempt at rock opera – the
“mini-opera,” as it was referred to, with its intricate
instrumentation, captured down to the last note and inflection.

The experience of listening to this record is beyond unique,
especially if you are a fan and know the songs inside and out. (Watt
alludes to this in the liner notes: “We knew that record inside and
out and Petra caught that spirit, big time.”) You discover that you
know every single inflection and every tiny insignificant sonic
detail, and find yourself singing along in your head to the various
tracks – for example, “Our Love Was, Is” has an angelic counterpoint
I don’t think I ever consciously noticed before. Or the bass line in
“I Can See For Miles” takes on a new dimension when it is sung and
not strummed, not to mention the compositional components you never
really heard separately from the rest. It feels like you are
listening to the music upside-down, or in another language – you know
it, but you suddenly don’t. The rug of ‘familiar’ is pulled out from
underneath you, and if you are lucky, it is like hearing and
experiencing this album for the very first time all over again,
except with the benefit of years of musical experience behind you.
You have context and can appreciate it more than you did the first
time you bought Sell Out, most likely that dreadful double-album
reissue with the ugly American cover.

Oh, and the cover of the CD – of course, the cover – it’s an exact
tribute to the original UK pop art masterpiece, which featured each
member of the Who in an advertisement for the products “advertised”
on the album. Of course, Hayden duplicates them to exacting
perfection. I just hope the experience wasn’t so exact that Haden
caught pneumonia from sitting in the tub of baked beans – which is
what happened to Roger Daltrey during the original Sell Out album
cover shoot.

(Remember what I said earlier about obsessed and obsessive.)

Finally, if you need an imprimatur in order to validate the record
for you, here’s a quote from Chairman Townshend himself: “I love it.
It is exquisite.”

No argument here.