The Who have always overreached. At their peak, it meant the most dramatic and challenging rock n’ roll ever recorded. At lower points, it’s brought a meandering, confused conceptual gestalt to a band that has mostly served as the tough front for singer-songwriter Pete Townshend’s neurotic self-doubts. Townshend’s solo work – and especially his multiple Scoop collections of home demos – provides interesting moments, but it’s his lifelong collaboration with singer Roger Daltrey that sets his compositions ablaze. Endless Wire, the first new Who album in 24 years, features its two surviving members front and center, and while no one will mistake this edition of the Who for the pure young man angst of Live at Leeds or Who’s Next, it does provide fans with a worthy update on their old heroes. As always, Townshend, yes, overreaches, providing too many songs that are meant to flow as connective tissue to an overriding theme rather than as independent vital organs. The immediate attractions are Townshend’s acoustic musings (“You Stand By Me”) being pitted up against Daltrey’s increasingly husky bark (“We Got a Hit“) while keyboard loops threaded throughout recall the days of “Baba O’Riley.”