Iggy Pop - Préliminaires

People says "Change or die". Perhaps affected by the recent death of his old buddy Ron Asheton, the venerable Iggy Pop appeared taken this words seriously or at least that is the impression this leaves us after listening to his most recent material "Préliminaires" an amazing album in which except for a couple of timid, very timid attempts (for example "Nice To Be Dead"), Iggy forgets almost completly about rock, not to say punk or hard rock, and delivers 12 tracks ranging from jazz! to french chanson and from bossa-nova to the New Orleans sound. Yeah, at this point of his life and after survive for over 40 years in the most crude and wild side of rock, Iggy does not have to prove that he is a rude guy; in fact, he does not have to prove anything to anyone. Anyway hear Iggy sing, in rigorous french, "Les Fuilles Mortes", a french jazz standard, or "How Insensitive," a original bossa-nova from Antonio Carlos Jobim seem to be an excess ... even for Iggy. Disconcerting to the first listening, even repellent to those who expect the Iggy from "Skull Ring" or "Brick By Brick" (not to mention those waiting for The Stooges), "Préliminaires" is an album that demands multiple listenings to discover, occult under all that apparent "softness", to the darker and most rebel Iggy in recent years. The Iggy that gives us exactly the opposite of what we expect. Thus, when we expect rawness and fury, we get the beauty and sensitivity of "I Want To Go To The Beach" or "Spanish Coast", when we expect the distortion and the clangor we get the funk and the "electronic" from "Party Time" or the blussy and acoustic guitars of "He's Dead, She's Alive ", when we expect Iggy Pop we receive ..."Préliminiaires". A dark, intense, slummy beautiful album, and yes: an Iggy Pop album. -CORANNIEIT-

Iggy Pop, Préliminaires
Astralwerks, 2009

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