Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression
The Scene
The man, the myth, the legend, the Godfather of Punk, the face of the Stooges, the harbinger of broken bottles and dirty words, the spitter, the junkie, the crowd surfer, the crawler on shards of glass, the Iguana, the shirtless badass, the dangerous crooner, the pylon of raw power, the ringmaster of the fun house, the Berlin brawler, the sexual demon, the passenger. James Newell Osterberg Jr.
Also known as Iggy Pop.
Yeah, man, the dude is back. Post Pop Depression sees Iggy return to album-oriented rock and roll with his first English titled solo album since 2003 – following a couple of Stooges reunions and a pair of French jazzish records. All four are better than their average star ratings would suggest. But damn, Post Pop Depression is a thumping good listen.
Josh Homme and Iggy corresponded by text (on Ig’s flip phone) and prose poem for a while, at least so was the claim when they showed up on Colbert earlier in the year. Homme being the bloke from Queens of the Stone Age and many other projects, if you didn’t realise. The concept of an album emerged and then soon enough they were camped out at Joshua Tree, recording in the desert with Dean Fertita (QOTSA & the Dead Weather) and Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys).
It’s clearly an Iggy Pop album but he’s always been a dude who reaches highest when challenged by collaboration. The Stooges stuff, the Bowie/Berlin stuff, the Don Was produced Brick By Brick. Between the band’s expertise (especially Homme, who does brilliant work here) and some killer tracks, we’ve got ourselves an album that stands among the some of the best stuff that 68 year old Iggy Pop has ever done. I cannot tell you how much I’m enjoying it, nor how absolutely magnificent it feels to have another great Iggy record to add to the collection. I can’t possibly tell you. But dammit I’m about to try.
The Songs
- Break Into Your Heart – Squirmily seductive, droning with intent and strutting atop a chunky rhythm. A really strong start.
- Gardenia – Barrel scraping living and idolistic lust. It’s what the Ig does best and this track kicks ass with its Bukowski-esque fantasy. Few people can pull off a spoken word interlude like this one. It’s all swagger.
- American Valhalla – Give him a holler if you find it. Something of a stroll around some great lines and heavy thoughts. One of the more conceptual tunes.
- In the Lobby – Thumping beats and cocky changes, this is Iggy in full focus. A couple wicked guitar riffs in there too (but MVP goes to Helders’ drumming).
- Sunday – Even the baddest of them wants to put his feet up now and then, escape than the ceaseless commercial hunger they feed us. Groovy stuff. Love the fade into the string-swelled/chorus led coda.
- Vulture – Acoustic, vaguely bluesy. At least until the bells start ringing. Quite like the stuttering leads too and Iggy sounds absolutely menacing.
- German Days – An ode to junkier times and a clear nod to this record’s biggest influence. Picking up the energy with a skip.
- Chocolate Drops – Fame is a fickle thing and the machine it’s manufactured in is all upside-down. Sweetly scathing.
- Paraguay – The man’s fed up, y’all. He’s off to Paraguay and you don’t wanna know what he thinks you oughta do with ya laptops. The song’s great enough even before a spoken rant to light passionate fire to all others. The wild animals chant is magnificent. Possibly the piece de resistance.
The Vibe
Come on, you know what an Iggy Pop record sounds and feels like. I’ll say that this one definitely marks its spiritual ancestry in Berlin, something of a sequel to The Idiot and Lust For Life – Homme’s said so himself. A song like Gardenia has that same slightly wobbly texture around a funky rhythm and the dramatic shifts that scream Bowie and Berlin and all those things from that iconic scene. Not to mention the xylophone or whatever that is at the start of American Valhalla. It’s like post-modern China Girl. Oh, also there’s a song called German Days, so yeah.
There’s a really creative approach to PPD where they haven’t played things simple. Some very intricate arrangements in there, songs not content to be three minute rockers. I mean, that’d be fine. I love that stuff and Iggy blasts them out of the water usually, but there’s a specific freedom to this where, like, why not have a violin-filled coda to Sunday? But even in subtler ways there are tunes that switch tempo at sharper angles then you expect.
When a 68 year old proto-punk is keeping you on your toes like that you wanna call it a comeback album. Except that Iggy’s already played down that thought, suggesting it may in fact be a farewell one instead. He ain’t so bothered with the effort of making an album anymore, he just checked in to remind us that he still can if he wants and with that perhaps there’s nothing left to prove. I highly doubt he’s about to retire to Florida (even though he lives there) but I get what he means. If there’s nothing pressing to say, let them listen to the old stuff rather than ask them to pay for a half-assed time-killer. Half-assed this record most certainly is not.
Sex and death and ego, there’s a whole lot of that. One of Iggy’s most alluring qualities is how he’s never been afraid to act the villain (and in turn has always appeared an anti-social hero). When he sings about death being a tough pill to swallow or time closing in on him, instead of sounding like the now-cliched late period Johnny Cash revival (All Hail Johnny!), it’s actually the same courting with danger that he’s always done. However when he spills that he has “nothing but my name”, that’s an uneasy sentiment. Coz it’s true, fame and reputation are the reason he still gets to do all that he does. Those legendary records… they all bear that name. It’s a rare showing of vulnerability, almost like a lifting of the veil. It’s a good thing then that the entire record belies that sentiment. Iggy’s honest and he’s real – but if anything, he’s invulnerable.
The Music
I can see why the musicians are all billed on the cover. This is technically a solo album but the contributions from each one of them is immense – you don’t get these ideas from studio bands only there to facilitate. It’s not that they sound like their own main sides (though maybe there’s a little Dead Weather – probably the most affected by Iggy Pop of them all), it’s more that they each bring in a different take on Classic Iggy and as such he really lets them shine. Plus there’s a tightness to the music that has to come from their camaraderie. All chilling in the desert, all there to make something wonderful. Iggy in a kimono doing stretches on the porch…
Old Iggy Stooge’s voice is a little deeper and slightly raspier than it once was. The dude can still sing like hell, though. As for the standard of songs, the guy has never had a problem writing a quality tune. What gets ya here is how sharp this set is. Gardenia was the first song released, performed on Colbert’s show, and it is absolutely undeniable. Rock and roll, baby, but serious stuff too.
Break into Your Heart sets a creepy tone, although it takes a different feel once you’ve heard the glorious closer. Iggy’s never been afraid to get sexual but BIYH doubles as a demand for personal connection in a world where those things are anything but (personal or connecting). Sunday is the centrepiece. Coming in dead centre on the tracklist it frames the two sides of the album, from the swaggier front to the wearier back. Not so much in the sounds, more in the ideas he pushes across. By the time he gets to Chocolate Drops he’s taking the piss out of fame and fortune and the industry that he fought against in Sunday and In the Lobby, and once you hit Paraguay, I mean, boom. Beginning with a paean to wild animals and uncomplicated living, growing into a waving of the white flag (“I’m going where sore losers go, to hide my face and spend my dough”) in the face of the very opposite in which he finds himself. Oh, but before he leaves he lets off a rant for the ages. Yeah it’s a 68 year old raging against the disconnect of technology but, buddy, when Iggy Pop tells you to get off his lawn you’d better scram.
Revelations
“I’m gonna break into your heart, I’m gonna crawl under your skin”
It should be mentioned that while this isn’t crooner Iggy, it also isn’t anarchy Iggy. The dude’s 68, he still doesn’t wear a shirt around but he’s also cut down on stage diving and whipping his dick out on stage. He said himself he wanted to make a record where he wasn’t just shouting. Art Rock Iggy seems a nice compromise.
“Alone, in a cheapo motel. By the highway to hell. America’s greatest living poet was ogling you all night. You should be wearing the finest gowns. But here you are now: gas, food, lodging, poverty, misery and gardenia. You could be burned at the stake for all your mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes…”
America’s Greatest Living Poet? Bob Dylan once probably didn’t say that about Smokey Robinson, I’ve got no issue with Iggy taking the torch. We need to give our poets more credit because the only one I can think of on the top of my head is Kevin Young.
“There’s always a catch in the darkness when you turn the lights on”
“I’ve shot my gun, I’ve used my knife. This hasn’t been an easy life”
“Innocence. It’s so hard to figure it out”
“I have nothing but my name”
Valhalla is a grand hall in Norse mythology ruled by the god Odin, to which soldiers would go when they died supposing they lived courageously and heroically… or if they died in combat.
“This house is as slick as a senator’s statement. This job is a masquerade of recreation”
“Got all I need and it is killing me and you”
Iggy annotates lyrics from his new album for Vulture
“Garish and overpriced. Let’s drink champagne on ice. Berlin and Christ. Champagne on ice”
Without doubt this is the best Iggy Pop record since 1993’s American Caesar (which is criminally undervalued these days in his catalogue). Possibly even the best thing since Lust For Life in 1977.
“When your love of life is an empty beach, don’t cry. When it’s painful to express the things you feel, inside.”
“Wild animals they do. Never wonder why. Just do what they goddamn do”
“There’s nothing ‘awesome’ here. Not a damn thing. There’s nothing wild. Just a bunch of people scared.”
I hate the way people use the word ‘awesome’ online. I hate it. One of the many clichéd exaggerations in an arena that demands everyone shout over top of each other to be heard, making bolder and bolder claims to be understood. The problem with giving everyone a voice is that most people have nothing interesting to say.
Finale
I’m sorry to say that this was written on a laptop. Hey, man, but I’m on your side here Iggy. I wanna flay the two-faced three-timing turds for all their evil and poisonous intentions too. I’m utterly fed up with all the vacuous trash that we have to sift through on a daily basis too, even the goddamn news is just more pandering junk. All these people are scrapping to be heard with nothing decent to say and all these media outlets (except The Niche Cache) are entitling them by giving them what they want and what suits their mind-crippling need for instant gratification. Case and point: when you google ‘Iggy’, he isn’t the first name that comes up. Ridiculous, we need art that’s difficult and challenging, we need citizens who take things seriously and capitalist paradise America is the worst of it. There are scores of people there ready to vote for Donald Trump simply because he talks the loudest. Listen to him, he says nothing. There is no substance. Jeezus, I’m with Iggy here, I’m sick and I’m gonna go heal myself.