What next for The Stooges' Iggy Pop after Ron Asheton’s death? How about a semi-concept album of New Orleans jazz and cabaret ballads, partly inspired by the cult French author Michel Houellebecq? The Ig has ventured outside his garage-punk comfort zone before, but surprisingly rarely, and never with such a sustained and successful experiment as this. His 61-year-old voice now has all the smoke-damaged, soulful power of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, oozing ennui and gallows humour. Two versions of the melancholy Parisian night-club standard “Les Feuilles Mortes” bookend the album, crooned in coarse-grained French, while the solemn spoken-word piece “A Machine For Loving” is lifted directly from the Houllebecq’s book, The Possibility Of An Island. At 36 minutes, Preliminaires is slight and covers-heavy, but points to a promising new career phase for Iggy as Detroit’s answer to Serge. STEPHEN DALTON For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive
What next for The Stooges’ Iggy Pop after Ron Asheton’s death? How about a semi-concept album of New Orleans jazz and cabaret ballads, partly inspired by the cult French author Michel Houellebecq?
The Ig has ventured outside his garage-punk comfort zone before, but surprisingly rarely, and never with such a sustained and successful experiment as this. His 61-year-old voice now has all the smoke-damaged, soulful power of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, oozing ennui and gallows humour.
Two versions of the melancholy Parisian night-club standard “Les Feuilles Mortes” bookend the album, crooned in coarse-grained French, while the solemn spoken-word piece “A Machine For Loving” is lifted directly from the Houllebecq’s book, The Possibility Of An Island. At 36 minutes, Preliminaires is slight and covers-heavy, but points to a promising new career phase for Iggy as Detroit’s answer to Serge.
STEPHEN DALTON
For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive
