Iggy Pop - Post-Pop Depression
IGGY POP - Post-Pop Depression
How’s this to end your summer: a secretly recorded Iggy Pop album produced with two Queens of the Stone Age (Josh Homme and Dean Fertita) and one Arctic Monkey (Matt Helders)?
Pop’s first album in four years sees him continually diversify and play, albeit with a greater cynicism and a more barbarous air than previously seen. It’s worth making this record 2016’s worst-kept secret.
The QOTSA imprint is palpable, pulsing through the dirty Southern grooves of ‘American Valhalla’ and ‘Break Into Your Heart’. It’s all shimmering guitars and Beck vibes for lead single ‘Gardenia’, with Helders showing great restraint throughout. ‘Sunday’ surprises by opening into lush orchestration, but it’s hardly a standout: the whole album is finely tuned. It’s the lyrical and vocal performance that truly shines – this is, after all, Iggy Pop’s record. The surly repetition of “I’ve nothing but my name” in ‘American Valhalla’ cements the album’s themes of legacy and aging, things that Pop doesn’t feel all too happy about.
Scatological and self-deprecating, Pop’s malice peaks in the closer ‘Paraguay’, where he unloads in a three-minute rant maligning the state of the world, the industry, and you – “Yeah, I’m talking to you!”
17 albums deep, and Iggy Pop still ain’t lettin’ up.
Iggy Pop's Post Pop Depression is out on Loma Vista/Caroline now.
How’s this to end your summer: a secretly recorded Iggy Pop album produced with two Queens of the Stone Age (Josh Homme and Dean Fertita) and one Arctic Monkey (Matt Helders)?
Pop’s first album in four years sees him continually diversify and play, albeit with a greater cynicism and a more barbarous air than previously seen. It’s worth making this record 2016’s worst-kept secret.
The QOTSA imprint is palpable, pulsing through the dirty Southern grooves of ‘American Valhalla’ and ‘Break Into Your Heart’. It’s all shimmering guitars and Beck vibes for lead single ‘Gardenia’, with Helders showing great restraint throughout. ‘Sunday’ surprises by opening into lush orchestration, but it’s hardly a standout: the whole album is finely tuned. It’s the lyrical and vocal performance that truly shines – this is, after all, Iggy Pop’s record. The surly repetition of “I’ve nothing but my name” in ‘American Valhalla’ cements the album’s themes of legacy and aging, things that Pop doesn’t feel all too happy about.
Scatological and self-deprecating, Pop’s malice peaks in the closer ‘Paraguay’, where he unloads in a three-minute rant maligning the state of the world, the industry, and you – “Yeah, I’m talking to you!”
17 albums deep, and Iggy Pop still ain’t lettin’ up.
★★★★½
Iggy Pop's Post Pop Depression is out on Loma Vista/Caroline now.
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