ALBUM REVIEW: Iggy Pop – Free

Loma Vista/Caroline International

Released: 06.09.19

Iggy Pop’s Free isn’t quite the same twilight period source of bemusement as say, Lulu, but it does inhabit the same solar system. It’s a march into a very strange quagmire for Mr. Osterberg, occupying wry, ironic distance and toe-curling vulnerability.

I don’t know what he’s trying to do with lead single James Bond; it’s possibly one of the oddest and most directionless pieces in his canon. Profound meditations on morality sit next to scatological irreverence; Mariachi horns, electronic squelches and jazzy rhythm arrangements are the only consistency on this baffling little journey and even then, the music is unpredictable, atonal and erratic. A true artist doing what he feels like; a great old man not giving a shit. What’s more righteous than that?