Iggy Pop turned 76 years old this past April and celebrated by playing a short series of West Coast shows with a set list featuring songs off his latest album, Every Loser<\/i>. In a world of unprecedented and unexpected events, you can perhaps add Iggy leaping around the stage as he passes the three-quarter-century mark with Duff McKagan of Guns N\u2019 Roses and Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers providing the rhythm section. But at least here we have a GOOD unprecedented event.<\/p>\n
And Every Loser<\/i> is a good record. It\u2019s actually better than good, despite some initial misgivings. The pre-release single, \u201cFrenzy,\u201d had me a little worried. For the last few\u2026 well, decades, Iggy has bounced back and forth between classy, carefully-crafted albums that often stretch his boundaries, such as 1999\u2019s Avenue B, <\/i>which included songs with Medeski, Martin, and Wood,<\/i> 2016\u2019s elegant, Josh Homme-led Post Pop Depression<\/i>, and even his previous record, the jazz-inflected Free, <\/i>and more blustery hard rock efforts that sometimes don\u2019t quite deliver lyrically either. Take 1995\u2019s Naughty Little Doggie<\/i> or 2001\u2019s Beat Em Up<\/i>, for example. And while Duff has more than established his credentials, I am wary of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose Josh Klinghoffer plays on many of the songs here. Not to mention that the drummer for Blink 182 makes an appearance and you\u2019ll also find Dave Navarro and Stone Gossard because\u2026 everybody wants to hang with Iggy.<\/p>\n
So \u201cFrenzy,\u201d with its bombast and facile lyrics, felt like Iggy was perhaps trying to again prove something that didn\u2019t need to be proven. No one doubts he can still rock with the absolute best. It\u2019s also the lead-off song on the album, so it was, therefore, a nice surprise when the second song, \u201cStrung Out Johnny,\u201d turned out to be a reflective, mid-tempo ballad about the descent into heroin addiction, Iggy\u2019s weathered baritone singing beautifully from hard experience. <\/p>\n
Things continue at mid-tempo for \u201cNew Atlantis,\u201d a propulsive, cracked love letter to Miami, Iggy\u2019s home for many years. The lyrics also reference our worsening environmental crisis in language that is all the more striking for its simplicity: \u201cSome say the world will end in fire; some say ice; me, I just see fewer birds, fish, and butterflies; plenty of concrete, though\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cModern Day Rip-Off\u201d dips back into the bombast and easy rhymes, but is followed up with my favorite song on the record, the wistful \u201cMorning Show.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll fix my face and go; time to do the morning show,\u201d sings Iggy with real sadness, a snapshot of what it takes to keep doing your job with a smile when everything else is falling apart. The pace is suitably languid and, I have to say, the instrumentation on this record, which frequently includes piano and keyboards, is sympathetic throughout, with Andrew Watt\u2019s production (mostly) leaving plenty of space to breathe, as well. Watt also co-wrote the album with the other musicians lending a hand here and there.<\/p>\n
The sub-minute-long \u201cThe News For Andy\u201d is almost just what the title says, picking up on a Stooges-era suggestion from Andy Warhol that someone should record a song that\u2019s just the reading of the news. In this case, however, Iggy is reading modern advertisements offering modern forms of \u201chelp.\u201d Perhaps that\u2019s no coincidence when it\u2019s become largely impossible to tell the two things apart.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cNeo Punk\u201d features Travis Barker of the aforementioned Blink 182 on drums and is again in the unsubtle category. But in this case, Iggy\u2019s chuckle and howl of glee at the end of the rampage make it impossible to be cynical. He was clearly enjoying pushing everything up against the wall, and you can\u2019t fault a guy for that. <\/p>\n
But things quickly come back to earth for \u201cAll The Way Down,\u201d a funky Lust For Life <\/i>or New Value<\/i>s-style rocker with a bit of nice crooning. Again, the lyrics offer compelling commentary on our times from someone who has seen a lot of \u201cLife that smells like death.\u201d <\/p>\n
Speaking of commentary, \u201cComments\u201d is another funky, \u201970s-type track, starting with a bit of a slow burn and referencing the bane of every artist\u2014perhaps every person<\/i>\u2014in the internet age: \u201cLooking at those comments all night; wondering if the comments are right.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cMy Animus Interlude\u201d offers another brief spoken bit with Iggy conjuring an air of defiance before the truly defiant final song, \u201cThe Regency.\u201d I have no idea if he\u2019s referencing a hotel or something larger and more abstract. Perhaps it\u2019s both. But whatever it is, it\u2019s an angry end to a record that is not going gentle into that good night. The song also features Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters on drums in what may be one of his last recorded performances.<\/p>\n
Iggy\u2019s artwork has sometimes been questionable, as well (again, see Beat Em Up<\/i>), but Every Loser<\/i> has the legendary Raymond Pettibon at the canvas, providing a painting whose meaning is entirely up for interpretation yet somehow unsettling, as is typical. He\u2019s also written the song titles and contributed some extra pieces while Iggy has scratched out the lyrics and somewhat humorously \u201ccollaborated\u201d with Pettibon in a couple places. It all makes for a nice visual package.<\/p>\n
So, hey, as I said at the start, this is a damn good record. While not as of-a-piece as Post Pop Depression<\/i>, my favorite of Iggy\u2019s recent outings, I\u2019ve been listening to this quite a bit. After some wilderness years, Iggy has seen his icon status firmly established in a way not unlike, say, Johnny Cash. Iggy is at his best when he doesn\u2019t bother to replicate past glories or try to prove anything, and he does that more often than not with Every Loser<\/i>. Anyone that\u2019s listened to his excellent radio show on BBC Radio 6 knows his passion and curiosity for music and the world in general remains fully intact, and you can feel that in this album. We better continue to appreciate him in the here and now because, as Iggy sings himself in \u201cComments,\u201d \u201cThe problem with life is that it stops.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":34774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7848],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46631","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-iggy-pop","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46631"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46631"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}