That he’s appearing as part of the London jazz festival signals that, at least at first, this punk-pioneering former Stooge does not wanna be your dog tonight. Instead, Iggy Pop explores the subterranean corners of his darkly jazzy new album Free, much of which was written by trumpeter Leron Thomas, who lends sonorous squall to the group’s Berlin-Bowie turbulence.
Tanned, sinewy and the only person who could convincingly pull off a “Rachel” haircut in 2019, Pop leans on his mic-stand, crooner-style, his rumbling vocal basso mucho profundo. He’s a static presence to begin with, conjuring the doomed lovers and the desperate loners wandering through his new songs. He introduces Page as concerning “the damage and weirdness” of a relationship ending, sounding like Kurt Wagner as he sings, all gravel and smoke and bittersweetness. The Dawn, he says, is about depression, and finds him musing “I don’t know where my spirit went,” before growling like Lee Marvin: “But that’s all right.”
Hardly Lust For Life, then. No, tonight Iggy sounds exactly like a man who has buried his best friends (Bowie, the Asheton brothers), whose inimitable swagger now betrays some arthritic stiffness. But abandoning the heady nihilism of yore to stare into uncertainty and darkness is its own act of punk fearlessness, the shadow of mortality lending his baritone ruminations a compelling resonance.
Iggy’s not ready for the grave yet, however. Announcing “some music from the 70s” and hurling his mic-stand to the wings, the cold funk of Sister Midnight sees him hurtling wildly across the stage, Lazarus-like, and leaping into the stalls for a commendably feral Death Trip, fans vaulting flights of stairs so they might touch the 72-year-old’s legendarily punished flesh. A scabrously autobiographical rewrite of Sleaford Mods’ Chop Chop Chop, meanwhile, sees Pop listing various chemical/sexual misadventures, then howling “but, somehow, I survived!”, thumbing his nose at the reaper with profane panache.
After his band finally file off stage, Iggy hobbles along one last circuit of his audience, pressing flesh and sharing with us some poetry. “Do not go gentle into that good night,” he rasps, before giving the Dylan Thomas verse a spin that’s gleefully his own: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
