By: Chris Ball
Iggy Pop | website | twitter | bandcamp |
Released on March 18, 2016 via Caroline
I don’t know about you but I was beginning to think we’d lost Iggy Pop, the rock recording artists, to the world of radio presenting and funny little jazz records. I don’t think I believed his fire had gone out, more that he was tired of people pissing on the flames. So it was a real surprise when he returned with Post Pop Depression, spookily similar to the return of his old mate David Bowie with The Next Day.
What Iggy has done on Post Pop Depression is given himself the best opportunity he can to create one last successful rock album. In turning to Joshua Homme, one of the most well connected and talented guys currently working in rock, and huge fan of Iggy’s work, he has surround himself with sympathetic group of collaborators who would do whatever it took to make a great Iggy Pop record, for their own sake almost as much as for the man himself. Homme has brought his QOTSA guitar playing buddy, Dean Fertita and Arctic Monkeys drummer Mat Helders to the party and in effect created a little gang. It’s no surprise that although the artist named on the cover is Iggy Pop though and that the press shoots feature the whole group, shades and leather jackets in place. I think Iggy needed to feel part of a gang, guys who will have his back, like the Asheton’s used to. And if we’re going to be cynical about it, it won’t hurt sales for Iggy to been seen hanging with members of Arctic Monkeys and QOTSA.
And so what about the music itself? Well of course my first question upon hearing it was ‘Is it any good?’. Yes, it certainly is. And then, swiftly, my second question was ‘Is it only good because Iggy is singing it?’ To which the answer is, at first, harder to know. What is certain is that no one else could bring the same amount of character, feeling and level of performance to these songs. They sound, as ever, very personal. Never one to wrap songs up in metaphor, Iggy tells it to you straight and despite the gorgeous produced back drop to these songs, it his voice that dominates.
You’ll probably have heard the songs put out in advance of the album release; the gothic stalker vibes of ‘Break Into Your Heart’ and the grand melodrama of ‘Gardenia’. ‘Gardenia’ has become somewhat of an obsession for me – it’s become an earworm of epic proportions, running through my head every day for over a month. That sounds a bit freaky, but actually I’m still not sick of it. I’ve obviously had plenty of opportunity to ponder it and I wonder if Iggy sees a bit of himself in the titular ‘Gardenia’, a black stripper, the diamond in the rough, equally feared and admired by the lesser men who ogle her and who ‘could be burned at the stake for all your mistakes’.
It’s a quite fabulous song, made more effective by the sumptuous but tasteful backing created by Homme and the band. All the songs here sound huge, full of echo and space, drama and fine detail. Homme and Pop say they set out to create a record that was heavy content, rather than just heavy, and the production certainly makes good on that, giving Iggy’s lyrics the best possible setting to move and impress. Homme has honed all his finest studio skills into elevating these songs to the point where they sound very important and powerful. Witness the end of ‘American Valhalla’, where everything drops away leaving just Iggy’s voice repeating ‘I have nothing but my name’. It’s pure drama. See also the Ennio Morricone-isms of ‘Vulture’ – you can almost feel the dusty desert wind on your skin. Unsurprisingly there are times when Iggy’s famous past comes back to haunt the record, with the Berlin period echoed both sonically and lyrically at points, however nothing is overdone, it all fits seamlessly into the baroque melodies and ghostly harmonies that have become Homme’s trademark style.
A fair bit has been made of the Iggy’s semi-improvised rant that closes out the album on ‘Paraguay’. In it ‘Paraguay’ becomes a sort of mythic escape, an Eden, where Iggy can retire to his own desert island away from the bullshit, away from ‘us’. It’s been called a resignation letter. Well, Iggy’s always been partial to a bit of a rant, witness ‘Mask’ from Beat ‘Em Up, so as much as he sounds pissed off on a lot of his records, we’ve always assumed he will be back – it’s Iggy Pop, right? He’ll never quit, outsider rage is just part of what makes him him.
The last time I saw Iggy perform was with The Stooges at All Tomorrow’s Parties a few years back and since then, unbelievably, both Asheton brothers have died. Fun though that gig was it already felt like a wake, a celebration of something that had already gone. What Iggy has now left us with is something very much alive and vibrant. As alive as he is. In this year of terrible losses that is a wonderful thing to know.
