Who Came First, Peter Townshend's first solo album, is a brilliant and moving album….

Who Came First is an amazing work. A whole load of words I haven't even seen written down since Meister Eckhart come tumbling out in trying to describe it—high quality ones like "incandescent" for a start and watch out for the others. As always with old panface Pete, the music manages to fuse high devotional feeling with commercial mastery resulting in powerful music. It's been like that right through: The Who's heaviest singles were the pride and joy of a necessarily defiant and dadaist generation; Tommy gave out Godhead while Orwelling us strongly against Godism; Who Came First is an album of release, joyful even beyond its own sensitive realizations of the sadnesses of change. Townshend stands alone on the cover, standing on eggs. Who came first? Open up the album and inside...