When Iggy Pop drawls beg-innn, on his new song "Break Into Your Heart", he sounds exactly like Johnny Cash. But Iggy Pop isn't ready for his American Recordings phase just yet. Post Pop Depression, the album on which that track appears along with eight others, is full of lament, but also the piss and vinegar with which a rock legend coming up 69 in April really should be spilling.
Iggy co-wrote the album with Josh Homme, who also produced and played bass. They started work on it early last year, so "German Days", born of Iggy reflecting on his time with David Bowie in Berlin and Munich, is no last-minute post-mortem. Homme has said finishing the album helped him after his friends and sometime bandmates Eagles Of Death Metal were caught in the Paris terror attacks last November.
But they haven't made a misery record. There's a melancholic minute of instrumental baroque-pop at the end of "Sunday", and Iggy's handful of spoken word moments are reflective. But on "Vulture", about the bird with "evil breath that smells just like death", he belts out a war cry as rousing as that first time he, with The Stooges, demanded to be your dog, 47 years ago.
Post Pop Depression (Caroline International) is out on 18 March
