Iggy Pop performs at SXSW. Will new album be his last?

Pop took the stage with members of Queens of the Stone Age, Chavez, and Arctic Monkeys in Austin. The musician's new album, 'Post Pop Depression,' is now available.

|
Dan Hallman/Invision/AP
Iggy Pop's new album 'Post Pop Depression' was released on March 18.

Singer Iggy Pop took the stage again recently at Austin’s South by Southwest Music Conference, performing songs from his new album, “Post Pop Depression.” 

Pop, who is likely best known as the lead singer of the punk band the Stooges, performed at the festival with a band whose members included musicians from Arctic Monkeys, Chavez, and Queens of the Stone Age. The album “Post” is now available. 

Critics who saw Pop’s performance at SXSW were mostly impressed by the show. 

“It was Iggy Pop’s show all the way. He sang with full-throated conviction, utterly hard-nosed within the songs but grinning and thankful between them,” New York Times writer Jon Pareles wrote, while Guardian writers Alex Needham and Lanre Bakare found that “Pop is on magnificent form, supplying two hours of pulverising magic.” 

Pop said earlier this year that the album “Post” could be his final work, a statement that was lamented by some music critics who feel the artist is still on top of his game. “The idea of Pop retiring is a shame, as his youthful exuberance continues to shine even half a century after he first started messing around with some kids with a penchant for noise in Detroit,” Vulture writer Hilary Hughes wrote.

Pop’s band the Stooges released their first self-titled studio album in 1969 and are often credited with helping popularize punk rock. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. 

Pop’s solo work has also been acclaimed. In between the Stooges’ original work in the 1970s and their new work beginning in the 2000s, Pop released such albums as “The Idiot,” which the musician worked on with David Bowie, and “Lust for Life,” which was also well-received. 

Rolling Stone named Pop’s song “Lust for Life” as one of the 500 best tracks ever recorded. 

Pop has remained prolific, releasing at least three solo albums a decade since 1977’s “The Idiot.” 

And whether it is his final work or not, “Post Pop Depression” is now receiving mostly positive reviews. Boston Globe writer Maura Johnston wrote that the album shows the “assertion and continuation of his decades-long legacy,” while Pitchfork writer Stuart Berman found that “Post” “recaptures the avant-rock frisson of his early collaborations with David Bowie.” 

Andy Gill of The Independent wrote that “it’s a relief to find [Pop] returning to hard rock music” after experimenting with other genres in recent works like “Préliminaires” and that it’s “an album by turns terse, sinuous and playful.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Iggy Pop performs at SXSW. Will new album be his last?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2016/0318/Iggy-Pop-performs-at-SXSW.-Will-new-album-be-his-last
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe