I fully intended to open this review with the sentences, “Has everybody lost their minds? This LP is a bore.” Which was the truth, the first time I listened to Iggy Pop’s 2016’s Post Pop Depression I thought it was the epitome of lame and fully intended to question the sanity of all the reviewers praising it to the skies before filing it in my “Ear Waste Pile” between Foreigner’s Greatest Hits and every album ever recorded by CSN&Y.
But I have warmed up to Post Pop Depression a bit. I still don’t think it’s a particularly good album. It’s an okay at best album, with a sad few good songs on it, just enough sad few good songs to give the critics the opportunity to scream “Comeback!” after the fiasco of Pop’s previous effort, 2012’s Après. Remember Après? That was the one on which Iggy crooned in French and which his record company listened to once and said, “Merde, Monsieur Pop! C’est de la merde ce truc!” The critics, I suspect, were also awed by the fact that the LP was collaboration between Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Pop, and featured Homme’s bassist Dean Fertita on guitar and bass and Matt Helders of the Arctic Monkeys on drums.
Pop sounds pissed on Post Pop Depression, and that’s a good thing. The targets of his wrath are vague, but it’s nice to know he’s channeling his legendary bile against someone besides himself. And it has a bona fide hit, “Gardenia,” on it to boot, which I must admit I find infectious even if it does sound exactly like a David Bowie song from the Thin White Duke’s execrable Let’s Dance era. Still, a hit! And one that leaves questions in the mind, such as whether Pop is talking about himself when he recites, “America’s greatest poet/Was ogling you all night,” and if so how is it America’s greatest poet managed to come up with a couplet as hackneyed as “Alone in the cheapo motel/By the highway to hell.”
I’m no fan of opening track “Break Into Your Heart,” which sounds like bad Doors to me, or to be more exact, bad Jimbo Morrison in full Bertolt Brecht mode. The ticky-tacky toy piano opening to “American Valhalla” leaves me cold as well, and the song itself does nothing for me. I like the lines, “I’ve shot my gun/I’ve used my knife/This hasn’t been/An easy life” but I’ll be damned if I have a clue as to what he’s trying to say in “American Valhalla,” and musically I’m once again haunted by the feeling I’ve heard this song before, on one eighties David Bowie LP or another. “I’ve nothing but my name,” he concludes, and he’s right, because most of the songs he brought into the studio sound borrowed, if not flat out stolen.
“In the Lobby,” same deal. Haunted by a Doors-like vibe, it positively drips with menace, as Iggy—who spends the tune following his shadow—sings, “it’s all about the edge” and “somebody is losing their life tonight.” The guitar and bass riffs are cool, but the melody is so-so at best. At one point Pop lets out a great scream that is completely out of place, but is guaranteed to bring you back to consciousness if, like me, the song was putting you to sleep. “Sunday” is practically a dance track, and opens with a cool guitar riff and the great lines, “This house is as slick/As a senator’s statement.” Unfortunately all of Pop’s verbiage adds up to the fact that he’s happy he has Sunday off, and is free to go golfing with Alice Cooper and Willie Nelson. The female backing singers are largely a waste, but the song itself is, compared to its competition, a winner despite its myriad flaws.
I’m still undecided about “Vulture,” which features Iggy and an acoustic guitar. To be more specific, I can’t help but think this one would have fared better all metalled up. Still, it kinda wins by sheer repetition, especially as Iggy gets all riled up and some classic glam-era Bowie vocalists wail in the background. As for “German Days,” it opens with a big riff stolen straight from Led Zeppelin, before Iggy comes droning in, sounding like he just left his sepulcher. This one is a dirge and a bummer but even a dirge and a bummer can have its charms, namely in the chorus, which once again reminds me of the late D. Bowie. Iggy goes into a variant of “The Song of the Volga Boatmen” about halfway through, before repeating “German days” in a lugubrious voice until that Led Zep rip shuts things down.
“Chocolate Drops” is rather leaden, with some call and response between Pop and some female backing singers. The song is a joke, literally, with the punch line being “When you get to the bottom, you’re near the top/The shit turns into chocolate drops.” Which is okay, I guess. I just wish the song didn’t drag so. As for “Paraguay,” it opens with some group vocals about wild animals doing what they goddamn do and never wondering about it. To a Nirvana-like opening Pop sings, “I’m going to where sore losers go,” in an obvious nod to Paraguay’s status as the perfect getaway for wanted Nazis. I like the melody, and the “tra la la’s” Iggy throws out, but what I really like is Pop’s closing diatribe, in which he says he doesn’t want any more information or you either, and he’s wants to make it clear he’s talking to YOU. He wants you to shove your laptop into your mouth and shit it out, and flay you, and he’s sick and it’s your fault and the cure lies in Paraguay, end of song.
To conclude, I’m more or less back where I started. Post Pop Depression is not the crushing bore and catastrophe I thought it was at first, but I can tell you now I will never listen to it again, which is sort of the point of buying a record, to listen to it more than once. The legendary James Osterberg hasn’t recorded a truly vital LP in quite a while, and it’s tempting to declare him a spent force. But you never know. I would put him together with a raucous garage band, and see what happens. Velocity! That’s what the man needs. Unfortunately, Post Pop Depression is completely lacking in velocity, which makes it, bottom line, a drag. Iggy may no longer want to be your dog, but this LP sure does. Arf fuckity arf.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C
