Iggy Pop, Post Pop Depression
Credit: Andreas Neumann
The list of casualties rock ‘n’ roll has endured over the past few months is as heavy as it is long, and it seems as if it just will not stop growing. It’s not simply the fact that influential musicians are dying in droves that hurts, it’s that the heaviest of the heavies — world-changing, genre-defining, status-quo-shattering creative godheads like David Bowie are among the fallen! And at a time when the state of popular music is as grim as it’s ever been — dull, corporate-funded, computer-assisted party drivel — it’s become extremely easy to feel deflated. Is rock ‘n’ roll dying with its elders? No, probably not. The cliche that rock ‘n’ roll will truly never die holds true, but it is certainly a scary time for the form. Iggy Pop — the godfather of punk rock (for those just tuning in) and one of the last rockers expected to outlive any of his peers — has seen the time left on the clock and felt its chill, motivating the Miami resident to create what he believes may be his final musical statement, Post Pop Depression.
Pop’s musical career has been marked by plenty of heavyweight collaborations and for his potential last artistic words the man reached out to arguably the heaviest (and realest) of all contemporary rockers, Queens Of The Stone Age’s creative linchpin and frontman Josh Homme, to operate as a foil and creative confidant. The album was tracked at Homme and Co’s famed desert recording compound Rancho De La Luna and the band that backs Pop on his could-be swan song includes QOTSA’s own Troy Van Leeuwen and Dean Fertita (also of the Dead Weather), as well as Arctic Monkeyís drummer Matt Helders, making the Post Pop Depression album a creation of an extremely super supergroup. But unlike most supergroups, the album truly stands on its own as an Iggy Pop statement, one that presents a vulnerable man in what is undoubtedly not his first staring match with his own mortality, and an exceptionally honest and connective one that reminds us why Iggy Pop, beyond the antics with the Stooges and the charisma, is one of the most disarming artists of his generation.
Pop and Co are taking the album on the road with a US tour billed as “one night only and one time only” and the powers that be have graced Miami with a performance at the plush Fillmore Miami Beach, and what’s more, Pop has invited his friends and Miami-bred garage-rockers, The Jacuzzi Boys to open the show!
