Song of the Week #11
This Song of the Week is different, as it isn’t necessarily a song we’ve been spinning at Sinner’s HQ, but an entire album on loop.
Iggy Pop at 73 is a veteran of the music industry these days - I’m as surprised as you that he’s still alive and kicking, outlasting Lemmy, Lou Reed and David Bowie in the process. We can argue forever as to who created punk in its entirety, but the Stooges brought live punk performances to the masses. The iconic images of a shirtless Iggy parading the stage with all the energy of an angry beehive from 1967 onwards are a testament to the infectious persona that James Newell Osterberg Jr created for himself in Chicago.
Iggy has so many classic tunes and albums from back in the day that everybody will be familiar with - especially Lust for Life being a timeless accompaniment to the relative scenes in Trainspotting 1 and 2, however this week we’ve been looping one of my favourite albums from the 2010s - Post Pop Depression. The album is unique in that it was the first real collaboration between Iggy and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and really takes aim at what the current music scene (and arguably life) is like for somebody well past their prime, discussing sex, death and everything in-between. This album for me is a real genuine work of art, released almost 50 years since the Stooges were formed - which is mind boggling in of itself. It really is Iggy pouring his heart and soul into this project from start to finish, and it shows in almost every song. He has used much of the 2000s to branch out and create some purposefully unusual and varied music, rather than sticking to a “signature sound” that so many bands are both loathed for not letting go of, and shunned for trying something new, but this from me is definitely the jewel in the crown of Iggy’s collection since the new millennium, and arguably since the Bowie-produced “Idiot” back in the late 70s.
I have linked both the entire album, and (to stick to theme - it is SONG of the week after all) the song American Valhalla, which focuses on dealing with your own mortality, and ends with the iconic repeated line of Iggy going “I’ve nothing but my name. I’ve nothing but my name.” A successful near-retirement punk god coming to terms with becoming but a dwindling old white dwarf, one of the last of his kind in the ever expanding universe of rock bands desperately clawing at any opportunity for fame and fortune. I would seriously advise anybody that hasn’t already, to give this an album a listen from start to finish. Pour a cup of coffee, spin the record table and for 42 minutes, just chill out and embrace the grungy garage rock sound of the entire record - and if you have an extra couple of hours, check out the accompanying live album at the Royal Albert Hall. In that performance you see someone old enough for a free bus pass and probably too short to get let onto some of the rides at Alton Towers, controlling the stage and the crowd out of pure instinct like the magician he is. Iggy Pop won’t be around forever, and if anything, this album serves as the final farewell that so many musical legends of the 20th century would have killed for. However, given that Iggy now spends most of his time on a soft sandy beach in Florida rather than rolling around in broken glass onstage, he’ll probably be sticking around for a few more years yet. Who knows, 2026 could bring Post Pop Depression part 2.