While the punning album title indicates a sense of unease, Jimmy Osterberg has given notice in several recent interviews that Post Pop Depression is most likely going to be his final album.
Closing down might be a more apt description, then, but if this is so, then Pop – who is 69 next month – has clearly decided to bow out in a manner that befits one of rock’s more pioneering, illustrious and confrontational figures. He is also making sure that his (possibly) final musical statement is one that will mark him out as less a one-note Stooge than a rounded, parameter-pushing songwriter.
For this album, Pop decided to collaborate with Queens of the Stone Age's vocalist (and Eagles of Death Metal's drummer) Josh Homme. While this is definitely, if not definitively, an Iggy Pop album, it isn't an understatement to say that the musicians/songwriters have co-conceived a sparse-sounding album that connects more with Pop's classic pair of records, Lust for Life and The Idiot, than anything else.
With Homme as much sidekick as sounding board – and with regular QOTSA member Dean Fertita and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders along for the ride – the album was recorded at Homme’s Joshua Tree studio in California.
Topics up for discussion were weighted towards Pop's increasing awareness that he was approaching the end of his line, and so songs such as American Valhalla ("I've nothing but my name," he snarls on a song that echoes his own China Girl. "I've shot my gun, I've used my knife, it hasn't been an easy life . . ."), Paraguay (retirement in a warm climate – with swearing), Gardenia (a Bowie-referencing lustathon), and the obvious memoir-noir of German Days form the backbone of intelligent deliberation.
A few songs fail to hit the mark, but if this is the sound of a man voting himself out of the game, then we most assuredly demand a recount.
