PHANTOM SWAY

    • Is This Iggy Pop’s Ciao Bella to the Masses?

    My favorite album of 2018 isn’t an album at all. And it feels like a farewell from an American classic. For 50 years, Iggy Pop has been a barrel of nitrous oxide hooked to a V12 engine, a kick drum filled with superheated napalm, a perpetually shirtless glam-punk provocateur slicing his skin, slithering across stages, and sneering at all things safe, normal and conventional. He was David Bowie’s friend, and remains the status quo’s sworn enemy. He is, and always will be, America’s Punk.

    But punk rockers get old, too, and Iggy – now a mind-boggling 71 – retreated from the spotlight in recent years. The man is no one’s retro-tour cash grab artist. But let’s don’t kick dirt on his grave just yet. In July, a humble EP – Teatime Dub Encounters – from Pop and Underworld, the Welsh techno masterminds Karl Hyde and Rick Smith, was let loose. At a mere four songs, it hardly seems like enough content to tower over everything else I listened to in 2018; on the flip side, at 27 minutes, Teatime Dub Encounters clocks in only six minutes shy of Iggy & The Stooges’ 1973 flamethrower of an album, Raw Power. What a wallop this little devil packs.Ever adaptable to his surroundings, Pop gleefully inserts his stream-of consciousness muttering, growling and howling into Underworld’s dense and infectious dancehall beats. The highlight is the first track, “Bells & Circles”, in which our wizened narrator laments about simple pleasures now outlawed, “Like smoking on the airplane. I remember smoking on the airplane. I used to love smoking on the airplane. Those were the golden days of air travel.”

    And it’s an absolute riot listening to Pop rhapsodize about this one tiny facet of disappeared life, to the point I find myself thinking, “Yeah, Iggy, I miss it, too! I mean, I don’t smoke and the idea of traveling in a pressurized tube of exhaled cancer vapor sounds absolutely disgusting, but you make it sound cool, dude! Let’s hear it for 1974!”

    And Iggy’s repeated phrase, “You can’t do that” permeates the song, a rebuke of strict modernity and a call to a time when maybe the world was a little more loose, fun, and dangerous. And you can argue the point, of course, if you aren’t too busy dancing along. Underworld excels at making your body move.

    “Trapped”, the second track, is an acerbic punk blast wrapped in a Devo-esque sheen, with Pop railing against the totems of American Dream family life. (“I’m trapped! Bring on the screaming babies!”) And, again, you can argue the point being made, especially since Iggy Pop has a wife, a son, and a house, but it’s too much fun listening to the old rebel giving this life one last shot across the bow. And knowing that he’s reached the end of his career does make this EP feel like Iggy Pop’s ciao bella to the masses.

    However, the disco ball is turned off for “I’ll See Big”, a downtempo confessional allowing an icon to summarize his seven decades in just under five minutes. He sees everything through the prism of the friends he’s made and lost: the awkward fellow travelers of his youth, his bandmates, his girlfriends, his “big friends,” with Pop demanding much from everyone he encounters, and with many of those demands returned in kind. Iggy Pop sounds subdued and wistful, but unbowed, a punk rocking man in full. And when the song concludes with Iggy’s raspy cackle – this man has smoked many cigarettes on many airplanes – it’s the sound of a man that knows he’s gotten away with something.

    And then comes the most ironically named song in history: “Get Your Shirt”. Underworld dragged us back to the club, kids, and here’s Iggy rapping about the business associates and girlfriends that have robbed him blind. (Oh, you lost your shirt in a monetary sense. Is this why you never wear a shirt, Iggy? Tragic symbolism for your raided bank accounts?)“It’s getting harder to feel free,” Pop groans. “It’s getting so much harder just to be.” That’s a punk-rock line if there ever was one. Freedom and being, stripping everything to its essence, three chords and letting ‘er rip. That’s what The Ramones did. That’s what the Buzzcocks did. (Bless you, Pete Shelley.) That’s what Iggy Pop has always done. He freed himself from convention and gave us a show. Thank you, sir.

    Underworld has been crafting well-sorted club bangers since 1988’s Underneath The Radar, and they could’ve gotten anyone to add lyrics and vocals to Teatime Dub Encounters. But bringing in Iggy Pop, and just letting him be and be free, makes this record. I heard plenty of good stuff in 2018, albums that allowed me to enjoy myself capitally upon repeated spins: Mitski’s Be The Cowboy, Rufus du Sol’s Solace, Bob Moses’ Battle Lines, Death Cab For Cutie’s Thank You For Today, Christine & The Queens’ exquisite (and exquisitely titled) Chris, and pretty much anything with Kendrick Lamar’s name on it. But I kept coming back to Teatime Dub Encounters. In an age where we’re losing our music heroes at an alarming rate, I’m not ready to say goodbye to an original specimen like Iggy Pop.

    Let’s let ‘er rip. Raw power forever.

    Chris Carlson
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