Iggy Pop

Iggy's second solo album with Bowie feels and sounds truer to his rock 'n' roll self. The bracing, stupid/smart lead off track "Lust for Life" is now featured in every third movie and TV ad, "The Passenger" is an existential pop masterpiece, and "Tonight" updates the late 1950s death ballad for the Studio 54 generation (Bowie's keyboard washes are priceless).

Iggy Pop's second comeback album leaves one with ambivalent feelings: glad that Iggy is
alive, apparently well, writing, singing and performing again, but upset because his new
stance is so utterly unchallenging and cautious. Taken purely on its own terms, Lust for
Life is a successful album. Side one is quite good, starting with the title cut, which rocks
with a Sandy Nelson-like drum style while Iggy delivers his survivor message to t... More >

If The Idiot exploits the (tranceprone) affinity for the slow rocker that Bowie evinced on Station to Station, this reestablishes the (apollonian) affinity for the dionysiac artist Bowie made so much of five years ago on Mott's All the Young Dudes. Like most rock and rollers, I prefer this to The Idiot because it's faster and more assertive--which means, among other things, that the nihilistic satire is counteracted by the forward motion of the music itself. (Grade - A-)