Iggy Pop: Preliminaires

If you drain the youth and vitality from punk’s ardent nihilism, what creative force remains? Iggy Pop’s latest solo release Preliminaires answers that question: not much.

On Preliminaires, Iggy retains his bleak, cynical outlook, but substitutes goofy French cabaret pop for overdriven guitars. This death-obsessed introspective album is purportedly inspired by Michel Houellebecq’s novel La Possibilité d’une île. It reaches for literary relevance with its café ambience and spoken-word interludes; the album is lounge-ready and laid-back. But the songs are flat, bitter and singularly lacking in poetic sensibility. On “Party Time,” for example, Iggy sings: “It’s party time / And I smell slime. / The stupid people / Make me evil.” On “Spanish Coast,” he exhorts, “Die, die, die / On the Spanish coast. / Die like a clown / with no friends around.” When he’s sneering through Funhouse or cavorting on Raw Power, Iggy’s broad-axe lyrics come across as bold and powerful. But if he isn’t wrecking himself with destructive ardor, we don’t become enraptured by his performance. His words have to stand on their own. Unfortunately, they don’t.

Musically, the album is in shambles. On his cover of “Les Feuilles Mortes,” Iggy intones amour in his nasal Detroit drawl over jazz clarinet and cheesy organ. “I Want to Go to the Beach” plods in two-chord steps through a suicide march to the seaside. “Party Time,” with its ridiculous slap bass and effects-laden beats, sounds like the Garageband tinkering of a Eurotrash dude pimping his Myspace page. The arrangements and engineering aim for menacing but arrive at silly. Occasionally, we catch a glimpse of a thoughtful, introspective artist at work, pushing through to another creative plateau (e.g., “A Machine For Loving,” “How Insensitive”); oftener, though, the old punk pioneer sounds like he’s given up the fight.

Fortunately, at key points when it sounds like moribund Iggy is about to take the final plunge, the album rattles to life. Third song “King of the Dogs” is a New Orleans romp that is both self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing – classic Iggy irony. Fourth song “Je Sais Que Tu Sais” is a Memphis blues boogie, albeit corrupted by aimless synth interjections. Sixth song “Nice To Be Dead,” one of the few tracks with heavy guitar layering, gathers some nice forward momentum. Without these tracks, the album would be lifeless; with them, it’s defibrillated repeatedly.

Preliminaires certainly has interest for rock historians and diehard Iggy Pop fans. The album isn’t unlistenable; but as a work of art held up against Iggy’s entire oeuvre, it is disappointing. Iggy marches on with the same old nihilistic anarchy; but with the guitars turned down and the drums swapped out for bongos, he just comes across as an old narcissistic windbag. His lot in life has made him bitter but not wiser. His difficulties with success have left him bitchy but not humble. A brash, angry youth is stirring. A bitter, silly old man is embarassing.