Since Bowie’s passing in 2016, we’ve started to lose many of the individuals responsible for changing music (OK before Bowie, but that’s when I really started to notice)—real time legends that many bands and artists owe their genesis to: Leonard Cohen, Prince, Ennio Morricone, Pharoah Sanders, the lists goes on. One guy who is remarkably, but gladly not on that list is the 75-year-old Iggy Pop, the godfather of punk.
And though we’ve had quite a few new albums from Iggy since 2012, like Post Pop Depression (his collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age frontman, Josh Homme), and Free (which saw him do weird spoken word poetry over ambient and jazz music), it’s safe to say that his fans have been craving a rock n’ roll, balls-to-the-wall energy album from Iggy.
We finally have just that with his latest, Every Loser, an album that has the same tenacity as his opus with The Stooges, Raw Power, the same staying power as his solo album, Lust For Life, and later, echoes of The Idiot. It’s really the best we could get from Iggy this late in his career. He clearly rediscovered himself while assembling his studio band made up of other modern day rock heroes; Chad Smith, Dave Navarro, Josh Klinghoffer, the late Taylor Hawkins, and weirdly, Travis Barker.
It’s an album that has Iggy’s quick-witted hooks, a little kooky and hammy in the beginning, but damn does it stick with you. Iggy is the king indeed and we all need to be reminded. Opening with the explosive “Frenzy” Iggy still has some piss and vinegar in him and makes it known. Later comes “Neo-Punk,” another punk rock banger, but this time with satire of all the “modern day punks” who think they’re hot shit, like Travis Barker or Machine Gun Kelly. It’s a fantastic and funny song that has a legend deducing exactly whats wrong with modern music that he basically inspired. Gold. Leave it to Iggy to rock harder than most modern bands again with “All The Way Down,” and “The Regency—(Yes Iggy, FUCK THE REGENCY!)
The post-punk feel of “Comments” also has one of the catchiest synth lines of the year, paying homage to Iggy’s ’80s era. It’s amazing that the producer, Andrew Watt, has worked with musicians like Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber—people who could not be farther from Iggy—because he really hit the money with this one. Who knows, he could be the one who inspired Iggy to go back to what made him great in the first place.
