Albums by this artist

Avenue B (1999)

Brick By Brick (1990)

Iggy Pop

Avenue B

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» MARK T.R. DONOHUE | STAFF WRITER

Iggy Pop Avenue B Virgin, 1999 RiYL: Stooges, Lou Reed, Medeski Martin & Wood

Try as you might, you can never quite count Iggy Pop out. Sure, he hasn't made a good record since 1971, but he's always good for a single or two -- "The Passenger," "Candy," "Lust For Life," hell, even that riotous song about teenage pussy from the otherwise disposable Naughty Little Doggy. The Ig's reached the same sort of career plateau as his old pal David Bowie -- they don't have to do anything interesting, since their past material is strong enough to keep the points coming in and the fans in the arenas.

Avenue B isn't quite bad enough to negate Fun House or Raw Power (nothing, excepting maybe Spin Doctors meet Hootie & The Blowfish featuring Dave Matthews could be that bad), but it's pretty darn awful. The idea of the record isn't terrible -- Iggy croons and mumbles about his perverse worldview over gentle rimshots, organ vamps, and acoustic strumming (some courtesy of jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood) -- but actually sitting and listening to the thing is not fun at all.

The spoken "No Shit" is monologue with a great buildup ("strangely, I became more bookish, and my home and study meant more to me as I considered the circumstances of my death") and no punchline, which leads into the simply terrible "Nazi Girlfriend." There's several more lousy monologues (all using the same awful synthesizer music), and a whole bunch more terrible songs, which vary only by which mellow genre they utterly fail to bring anything interesting to (Latin percussion on "Miss Argentina," old style rock-n-roll on "Shakin' All Over," breakbeat jazz on "I Felt The Luxury").

As usual for Pop, there are two songs on Avenue B which save it from being entirely worthless. The album's title song is actually not bad, merely for the conceit of presenting Iggy as a Johnny Mathis-type crooner with no apparent irony intended. And the stunted, Stooges-meet-Beck riff of "Corruption" makes for a genuinely good song. Iggy even brings out his old sneer and shout for the verses and chorus ("corruption rules my soul!") as opposed to the deep croon that sedates the listener for the rest of Avenue B.

Final reckoning: Is Avenue B any good? Nope. Will it do any long-term damage to Iggy Pop's career? Of course not. Time marches on, and as Iggy gets closer to 60, it looks increasingly less likely that he's ever going to make Rawer Power or More Fun House. But maybe it's for the best. Seriously, as a 51-year old man, Iggy is way past his rolling-in-broken-glass peak.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.