Iggy Pop
Brick By Brick
»
Iggy Pop
Brick By Brick
Virgin, 1990
RiYL: David Bowie, Lou Reed, New York Dolls, The Stooges |
Using wunderkind producer Don Was (Bonnie Raitt) helped. So did enlisting Keith Richards' X-Pensive Winos, Slash and Duff, as well as the B52s' Kate Pierson. And covering John Hiatt's marvelously spooky "Something Wild."
Pop is by no means the first rocker to get past 40 and release a more mature, sober piece of work. But that sort of stuff usually comes from mainstream fossils like Henley and Crosby. Iggy still lurks on the fringe, so his take on the mid-life blues inherently sounds fresher. Indeed, he crams a survey of America's decline into 13 songs, the best of which focus as much on his personal struggles as on societal ills.
In the disc's opener, "Home," "Something Wild" and the title track, Pop examines the need for security -- in relationships, materially and emotionally. This is a man who's rolled around in broken glass but still pays a price for his wild youth.
"I Won't Crap Out" and "Butt Town" address the macro and micro of Iggy's "sell out," with the latter being a nasty rip on the shallowness of his chosen home, Los Angeles. Better still, "The Undefeated" takes up that favorite Republican idea: America has grown soft and weak. The song decries Americans' willing surrender of basic freedoms and complacent slide into alienated silence.
The album's centerpiece, "Neon Forest" lets Iggy work out his misgivings about urban decay, suburban decadence and his own damaged self. And "work out" are the key words here. The Winos crank out a vintage Stones groove founded upon a riff they must have nicked when Keith was out getting a refill.
Still, one feels compelled to ask Iggy not to write any more love songs, unless they be more in the "I Wanna Be your Dog" vein. His duet with Pierson, ("Candy," in which a man fondly remembers his first lay), is a decent pop song which sounds swiped from Belinda Carlisle's catalog. "Moonlight Lady" is three-and-a-half minutes of maudlin that makes you glad your stereo has a remote.
Had Iggy tried something like this again, who knows what would have happened? As it stands, he waited three years and dropped American Caesar, basically an aluminum-coated turd.
RUSS WAIT |