Iggy Pop
Preliminaires

Perhaps the last possible concession to my twenty-year-old self was taking the latest Iggy Pop CD from the rack, bringing it to the counter, and paying for it. Then - as an inevitable corollary - taking it home and listening to it.

Anyway, there's nothing to do: I have to accept the fact that I'm getting old.

The famous twenty years ago, this album would have provoked some emotion in me just because of the name on the cover, but today I listen to it slicing it as not a butcher would to find something to eat, but as a surgeon would to see if there's something infected to cut away.
Iggy here does - again - what he had already tried to do - x years ago precisely - with the Bregovich of "In The Death Car" and with the infamous soundtrack for (but do they still talk together since then?) Johnny Depp of "The Brave".

That is to say, something else. Something else other than a one-two-three-four cooked in more or less the same sauce, more or less enjoyable, depending perhaps more on the mood than on the quality, since we've been set towards the bottom for a long time. 

Having abandoned the Stooges (but before or after knowing he lost Ron forever? Who knows. In my opinion, well before. Was it a suicide then? Call CSI Detroit, please...) anyway, what was left for Iggy?
It must be said that many have tried to do "something else". Sting even sang opera (do you remember?). Lou Reed did a musical (do you remember?). David Bowie did all sorts of things (so many that I can't recall them all for you). After Goran, Iggy always did one-two-three-four.
However, he also sang "I'll Be Seeing You" with Françoise Hardy: it seems that French has stayed in his heart since then.
If it is as I suspect, Iggy simply falls in love with things: he uses them, chews them up, makes them his own, and eventually spits them out. And then he makes an album and sells it. And I buy them from him.

Anyway...

Be that as it may, the songs are enjoyable but I don't understand them. No common thread to hold them together except his voice. It's not a well-digested project. Intimacies (we know Our Man writes about himself) that do not explore new horizons. Perhaps we have to wait for him to reach 80 (years) to touch some new chord. The crazy hiatus between "Down On The Street" and "Little Electric Chair" had already made my hair turn gray, but the one between "My Idea Of Fun" and "King Of The Dogs" will probably make me lose them all.

Twenty years ago I would have had certainties. I find myself in front of a multifaceted and layered artist. How cool.

I would have written myself "For a long time, Iggy is no longer the Iguana,(...) he is not a slave to his predictable part in the rock circus and shows to be a free mind. Here (...) Houellebecq's book hit sensitive nerves and produced an intense, surprising album..."

Today I say "Ah, give me a break."

Today that I've lost my certainties and Berlusconi is in government, I no longer know what to think: in my opinion, Occam's razor is the only solution to resolve the matter. Iggy is a sly devil of galactic proportions. So I would rather subscribe to the idea that Iggy "enjoys playing bizarre roles (...) for a show-off senile whim or the need to exorcise the anxiety of passing time by embracing ever-new ideas of himself, as children do when they casually change the plots and characters in their games."

And anyway, Iggy probably has rent to pay too.

Houellebecq aside.