Review Summary: Over the city's ripped backsides..
Despite its saucily moribund title,
Post Pop Depression was a point of much-needed revival for Iggy Pop. The man had been floundering for years prior, his well-earned rep of legend carrying him through three decades of going through the punk rock motions, capped off with some clumsy dabbles in French noir pop. So when Josh Homme came knocking, the disadvantages of collaborating were difficult to see. Homme would get a chance to play around with a childhood hero, and Pop would get to hitch a wagon to the last relevant rock star left around. The resulting album invariably wasn’t a career-salvaging, U-turn masterpiece, but it did its job well enough – Pop was back and for the first time in a long time, it felt as if he still had some fire left in his sinewy old gut. Most importantly, that Velvet Goldmine spackle that Bowie had used to resurrect Pop after the Stooges imploded was felt at
Post Pop Depression’s every turn. So when Pop and Homme got a band together to tour the record and record a concert album, it surprised no one that the set-lists were teeming with Pop’s strongest solo material from the end of the 70’s.
The band don’t muck about trying to cull better moments from Pop’s prodigious and spotty output post-1979. Aside from choice cuts off
Post Pop Depression and brimstone cult film theme “Repo Man,” they stick to the Bowie/Berlin era.
The Idiot and
Lust for Life make up half the set-list, each song getting the Homme treatment – glam, post-punk and that opiated desert coming into one.
Most everything lands perfectly. The synth breakdown in “China Girl’s” rowdy second act is bolstered by glinting guitar-work. “Fall in Love with Me” is sliced-up by scuzzy mini-solos, and is then led seamlessly into the pointed apocalyptic hysteria of “Repo Man.” The chintzy swing of “Chocolate Drops,” the opening salvo of “Lust for Life.” Pop’s raspy croon and the Queens’ Like Clockwork gracefulness reach symbiosis and give new life to songs, most of which had been out of regular live rotation for years.
Some small missteps do slip in at points. “Sixteen’s” already-weathered proto-tendencies become a bit unbearable in its robot rock facelift. Pop’s voice, elegantly rough in old age, works fantastically at mid-tempo, but falters into a wispy howl on “China Girl’s” higher registers. The disjointed audience chants that round off “Nightclubbing” is spectacular to watch from concert footage, but from an audio perspective, it snaps the song’s marching momentum. The material of
Post Pop Depression, even at its best, is also understandably weaker than the throwback set.
But note for note, the show is pulsing with stretches of euphoric beauty. “The Passenger” in particular is something to behold. Homme underpins the legendary strum with hazy, crackling guitar and Pop sings with wild abandon. It’s the concert’s pure aesthetic moment, the band and audience melding into a roar.
Amid the expected and road-tested talent that the Queens bring to the fold, and Matt Sweeney’s reverentially competent bass, Matt Helders’ drum-work deserves a separate mention. He navigates the art-drums of Pop’s late 70’s material wonderfully, lending power without turning the songs into aggro-rock paroxysms. His percussion has long since been the ace up the Arctic Monkeys’ sleeve, understated and virtuosic.
Pop is at the center of it all. The consummate showman, his excitement of working with some proper substance after a long period of inferior experiments and thick-headed rock, is shining through each howl and yelp.
Bowie’s Berlin era is easy to love, but it’s audible that traces of Ziggy, Plastic Soul and the Thin White Duke all course through the musicians. It coalesces nicely, tempering the artful frigidness that traversed a lot of
The Idiot and
Lust for Life with glam rave-ups and a fuzzy ephedrine coat. What Homme attempted and intermittently managed on
Post Pop Depression’s arrangements all fall in place on these variations. The set is tight, polished and has just enough personality coming through from its moving parts without gutting its original blueprints. Nothing about the performance feels apocryphal, phoned-in or masturbatory. The giddy elation of these veterans paying tribute to Pop and Bowie is evident through nearly every instant (The video shows the band smiling boisterously throughout the set). It’s great music, played by deft veterans who were as profoundly altered by it as anyone else.
