Grade: B
I think it’s sufficient to say the past six months have not been good on music lovers.
On March 16, Frank Sinatra Jr. died. Before him, we lost Lemmy Kilmister, Scott Weiland and David Bowie. This new decade has made a habit of killing off a plethora of rock musicians from the mid-1960s to early 1970s.
As of right now, punk rocker Iggy Pop is one of the few remaining maestros of his generation.
The frustration, alienation and loneliness that comes with this isolation is the driving force behind his new album “Post Pop Depression.”
Pop doesn’t do it alone, either. For this project, he collaborated with Queens of the Stone Age members Josh Homme and Dean Fertita, as well as Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders. Homme also produced the record.
Pop was close friends with many of the rebels of the aforementioned period. They believed they were the only ones who seemed to truly understand each other, so they clung together for their lives.
This becomes transparent upon listening to just the first 30 seconds of the opening track, “Break into Your Heart,” where Pop channels Bowie with deep, Sinatra-like vocals fused with Bowie’s strange signature vibrato.
Pop also nods to Bowie in the tongue-in-cheek dance track “Sunday,” which, if given some stardust, could have easily have been featured on Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” album.
Bowie isn’t the only one with a possible tribute on “Post Pop Depression” either. “Gardenia,” the only single for the album thus far, has a tone and lyrics reminiscent of the late Lou Reed, who was also friends with Pop.
While not a direct tribute to anyone, the track “American Valhalla” carries the lost generation theme the heaviest. Pop ponders throughout the track what happened to the world he grew up in and if it could ever reach salvation.
It becomes apparent by the end of the song that Pop simply does not know, but he doesn’t seem hopeful. At the very end, he chants over and over, “I’ve nothing but my name.” He comes to realize his worst fears here: in this new generation of music, he is irrelevant.
Perhaps one of the most distinct, yet stylish songs on this album would be “Vulture.” With its oddball guitar riffs, impeding war drum beat and Pop’s otherworldly “ooo-weee-ooo-ooooh’s” in the chorus, it sounds like it would belong in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
Unfortunately, “Vulture” is where the album ceases its circulation of exceptional songs. The final three tracks seem to fall out of place in regard to balancing the catchiness of the instrumentation with the darkness of the lyrics.
Instead, both Pop and Homme decided to focus on the latter quality, and it did the ending to the record considerable damage.
The prime example of this is “Paraguay,” which is perhaps one of the most unintentionally hilarious songs I have heard in a while.
Pop is 68 years old, so the idea that he may be a bit behind on the times is not far-fetched, but wow. Just wow.
The first half of the track is pretty standard and while nowhere close to being as good as the aforementioned songs, it’s nowhere as bad as “German Days” or “Chocolate Drops.”
Then the monologue starts. Halfway through this six-and-a-half-minute song, Pop decides to begin ranting about how messed up our generation is, given its dependency of technology. He then proceeds to graphically describe exactly what we can do with our laptops.
And then the album just ends abruptly, making me think, “What did I just listen to?”
Despite the ending, however, this is actually a pretty solid album. Homme’s production sounds wonderful, and both Fertita and Helders gave exactly what was needed from them for the record: raw power.
Pop himself proves on this record that his voice is still as powerful and energetic as ever. He’s the Paul McCartney of punk, honestly.
While he is now living in a new age of music, Pop proves in “Post Pop Depression” he is not yet ready to give up. Never before had Pop’s lyrics proved so true, “I’m the world’s forgotten boy, the one who searches and destroys.”
