Featuring the likes of Chad Smith, Duff McKagen, and Taylor Hawkins, Iggy Pop’s star-studded Every Loser explodes out of the gate with the savage guitars of “Frenzy,” a blocky, hardcore-inspired spin on the Stooges’s ferocious “Search and Destroy.” The Godfather of Punk’s bark is as snotty as ever, and he howls wildly over sharp guitar bends, describing his enduring restlessness: “I’m sick of the freeze, I’m sick of disease…I’m in a frenzy.”
In another nod to the Stooges’s 1973 album Raw Power, “Strung Out Johnny” slows things down a la “Gimme Danger.” Featuring a similar flangy arpeggio and new wave synths, the track is a pensive ballad about the disease of addiction. “Love becomes compulsive, it’s wiser to say no,” Pop croons, the music swelling sensually around him. The charged menace in his baritone intensifies as he half-whispers, “All fucked up/You’re strung out, Johnny.”
“New Atlantis,” meanwhile, is a romantic ode to Pop’s adopted home of Miami and its degenerate Americana. Pop gets apocalyptic in between musings about swindlers, pushers, and thugs without sacrificing his sly sense of humor: “Some say the world will end in fire, some say ice/Me, I just see fewer birds, fish, and butterflies/Plenty of concrete though.”
Elsewhere on Every Loser, the rip-roaring “Neo Punk” lampoons the punk scene and the contradictions that have only intensified as the genre has contended with growing old: “My hair is blue and my prescription too.” The song highlights the clash between commercial success and DIY ethics, a dichotomy that’s underlined by melodic verses and tight hardcore punk choruses propelled by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker.
Throughout Every Loser, Pop cribs from his own musical past to conjure the nihilistic power of his former band’s first three albums. For one, the flamethrower riff on “Modern Day Rip Off” is lifted from 1970’s demented “T.V. Eye”—a trick that’s repeated two tracks later on “All the Way Down”—while its one-note piano tinkering echoes 1969’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” These throwback moments can be hit or miss, as even when the music rages with characteristic unhinged force, Pop’s lyrics occasionally take a turn for the silly (“A respectable person would not do so much cursin’”).
But despite a few clumsy moments, Every Loser proves that Pop not only has more to say, but continues to find exciting ways to say them. To wit, the scorching album closer “The Regency” finds him as confrontational as ever: “Feeling murderous toward a journalist…Fuck the regency, fuck the regency up.” After all this time, he can still shit-talk like the best of them.
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