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IGGY POP'S AMBIENT, LITERARY JAZZ ALBUM

Iggy Pop, the gravelly godfather of punk rock, has mellowed since his howling heyday in the 1970s. But his latest album, Les Préliminaires, would seem almost inconceivable to fans of the smack-addled screamer's early work with The Stooges. Once famous for guzzling gallons of bourbon on stage, rubbing broken glass on his writhing chest and growling "I Want to Be Your Dog", Iggy Pop has released an ambient jazz album. And not just any jazz album. Sung partly in French, it was inspired by a novel by Michel Houellebecq called "The Possibility of An Island" ("La Possibilité d'une Ile").

“I got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars,” Iggy Pop vented in this unexpectedly earnest promotional trailer. After his last album, a reunion with The Stooges called The Weirdness, flopped, it perhaps made some sense for him to turn away from rock and roll.

The best song on the new album is "King of the Dogs", a lurching New Orleans jazz number dripping with raunch that suits Iggy Pop’s moaning voice. He certainly has the pipes for boozy French jazz. At the risk of infuriating Iggy Pop fans, you could draw a parallel with another 70s-era male vocalist  who recently veered off into croony torch song territory: Rod Stewart.

What seems especially out of character is the album's literary bent. Houellebecq is a challenging and occasionally brutal read. "The Possibility of an Island" juxtaposes a debauched present-day France with a bleak future of cloned "neo-humans", among whom ordinary urges and desires have been extinguished. When the few remaining real humans die, they attain a kind of immortality in these anodyne, self-improving clones. “Life becomes eternal, just not very satisfying,” Iggy Pop observed. Pain and meaning are related, as are happiness and suffering. "I thought the book was a mother f****r."

Iggy Pop was originally asked to contribute to the soundtrack for “The Last Words of Michel Houellebecq”, a documentary about the sometimes controversial author. But he was so inspired by the novel that he ended up ignoring the film to write music for the book. For Iggy Pop, Les Préliminaires is “score music”, muted, soft and occasionally haunting. Marjane Satrapi, a graphic novelist of "Peresopolis" fame, inked all of the album's artwork.

The album is uneven. Iggy Pop is at his best when he’s having fun. He can get embarrassingly syrupy and painful to listen to when he preaches. But he succeeds in capturing Michel Houellebecq’s work. There is something that
resonates between the two men--a bawdiness mixed with nihilism,
perhaps, undercut with a raw sincerity.

Les Préliminaires is out now.

~ JAMES MCGIRK

Picture credit: aleksey.const (via Flickr)