Introduction
When Iggy Pop took to the stage at the Montreux Jazz festival for his third appearance, few could have anticipated just how legendary the performance would become. Airing a mix of new tracks, unassailable classics, and deep cuts, he marched on stage with a 7-piece band and preceded to level the packed-to-capacity Stravinski Auditorium to its very foundations. No one plays from the heart quite like Iggy and there’s a reason why his music has been lauded by everyone from Sonic Youth (who so memorably covered I Wanna Be Your Dog), to Mogwai (who opened CODY with a snippet of Iggy explaining the essence of punk to an interviewer so far out of his depth, he was unlikely ever to swim to shore).
The Package
Available across a number of formats, ignore the ubiquitous digital, and choose either from the CD – Blu Ray digipack or the gatefold, 2LP edition to fully experience the wonder of Iggy’s towering performance. Slightly truncated to meet format space restrictions, the CD and LP editions feature 17 tracks apiece, while the download and blu ray open with an additional track, Rune. The only misstep here, as is so often the case, is that the vinyl does not include the blu ray disc, meaning that for those who want vinyl and visuals, you have to fork out for both sets. However, this is a small price to pay for a concert of this quality and, if the recently released clip is anything to go by, the blu ray is worth having.
This review is drawn from a promotional stream of the CD edition.
The Album
The album opens with the scratchy punk ‘n’ roll of Five Foot One, an infectiously groovy number wherein Iggy greets the audience with a jovial “hey motherfuckers, kiss my ass”. A vital opener, boosted by the occasional stab of roaming brass and led from the front by the irrepressible Iggy, it’s as firm a statement of intent as you could wish, and it belies the fact that Iggy is now ingloriously approaching his eight decade on this planet. From there, the band are simply unstoppable. When Iggy shrieks an indeterminate imperative, plunging the band into T.V.Eye the visceral thrill is real, and no amount of brass, as cool as it is, can leaven the impact of the band’s explosive playing. The set is not only about the past, either. Drawn from Iggy’s most recent album, Every Loser, Modern Day Ripoff shows that neither Iggy nor his band has any intention of slowing down any time soon. This is rock ‘n roll stripped down to its testosterone-fuelled essence and delivered with all the power of a preacher in the grip of holy fever and, the fact that it can sit so comfortably next to T.V.Eye and the following Raw Power only serves to highlight the fact that Iggy has lost none of his touch for a memorable melody, despite the splenetic fury of the delivery.
Keeping the highlights coming thick and fast, Iggy digs into the Raw Power album for the wonderful Gimme Danger, a track that predicted the career of the Queens of the Stone Age by some thirty years, and which sounds as fresh today as the day it was released. It’s followed by a swaggering take on The Passenger, the horn section and up-stroked guitar stripping some of the latent sleaze from the original, but perfectly paving the way for the audience singalong on the chorus. There’s even room for a storming Hammond solo that damn near blows the venue’s doors off, eliciting an almighty cheer from the audience, before the track slips into slinky jazz territory, as if to remind us where we are.
One of those rare tracks that can be instantly identified by its opening drum pattern alone, Lust For Lifepositively explodes into life, and the spontaneous joy that reverberates around the auditorium is real and sustained as bass, guitars, and horn section are all brought into play. Even via the somewhat sanitised medium of a recording, it sets the adrenaline blazing through the veins, and you can only imagine what the audience must have felt while trapped in the headlights of this joy-fuelled juggernaut. A brief digression into New Values finds Iggy exploring the bass-led dub of Endless Sea, while a deeper, darker cut from Raw Powerfollows in the form of Death Trip (“not a fuckin’ beach trip”, hollers Iggy), which finds an energy that was only hinted at in its Bowie-produced incarnation on record. Even more surprising, the title track of the Sick Of You EP (an outtake from Raw Power, separately released and recorded with berserker spirit) is turned into a jazz piece that lulls the audience into a false sense of security, right before the band unleash a punk-fuelled sting in the tail that is so menacing in its deployment, it almost veers into metal territory. With Iggy clearly enjoying toying with the audience, you can almost see them struggle back against the onslaught, especially when a howling solo cuts through the mix, every note razor tipped and intended to wound.
With the night raging past, the unhinged punk rock anthem I Wanna Be Your Dog is unleashed with bruising force and, if it heads into a darker, jazzier place, complete with spoken word passages, it’s only a moment’s calm in the eye of the storm, rather than a full-blown reinvention. It’s followed by another Raw Power highlight and, if the recorded version of Search And Destroy always felt like it should have belonged to Mudhoney, this live rendition does a solid job of showing how that might have looked, horns and all, and it leads to a blissfully extended coda that just keeps getting faster.
Returning for an encore to uncover a lyrical thread that harks all the way back through his catalogue, Iggy unleashes the proto-industrial nightmare of Mass Production, an unholy piece that remains a searing commentary on untrammelled capitalism, the rape of the environment and dehumanising work on the production line finding expression amidst a suitably grinding backdrop. In such a context, where could the nightmarish Nightclubbing take us other than to hell’s own strip joint? “Nice and creepy boys”, instructs Iggy, as the band take the track down a David Lynch / Angelo Badalamenti sideroad, strewn with the corpses of the damned. This carnival of horrors is far from done, too, as we drop into Fun House for a pair of tracks – a slinky Down On The Street and the raging MC5-esque punk of Loose – both of which greeted like old friends by the audience.
As befits so contrary a spirit, the night ends not with a longstanding fan favourite, but with 2022’s Frenzy, a recent piece that does more to underscore Iggy’s enduring place in the great pantheon of rock ‘n’ roll than any classic cut possibly could have done. It is the perfect end to a perfect show that demands your attention throughout, and it leaves you both as exhausted and exhilarated as if you’d been the pit yourself for the duration.
Iggy Pop Montreux Jazz Festival 2023
This is not an album for Iggy Pop fans. This is an album for anyone… anyone… who has ever worshipped at the altar of rock ‘n’ roll. In an era where we find ourselves forever surrounded by repackaged and reprocessed works from once pioneering artists, Iggy stands tall, still elbowing his way through the most febrile of industries and demanding his right to stay true to his own muse. Captured raw on stage in Montreux, and captured really is the only word for so feral an artist, he delivers an authentic expression of music as art to such a degree that words frankly fail. Fuck criticality, his performance is simply perfect, and this concert should be mandatory viewing, Clockwork Orange style, for anyone thinking to enter this world. 10/10
