Free/ Iggy Pop - punk


By Narendra Kusnur

 Album: Free
Artiste: Iggy Pop
Genre: Punk
Label: Caroline International
Rating: ***

James Newell Osterberg Jr, better known as Iggy Pop, has often been described as the godfather of punk-rock. It all began in the late 1960s when his band The Stooges created waves with its distinct sound and angry, rebellious songs. Iggy later collaborated with David Bowie, and influenced many artistes like the Damned, Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Joy Division and even Nirvana.

The American musician never sold in large numbers, but a few things defined his persona, besides the fact that he was an under-rated role model. One, he was a flashy showman, quite often performing bare-chested. He was one of the early practitioners of the stage dive, where the artiste dangerously jumped into the crowd. Third, he has one of the most booming baritones in rock, somewhat in the Leonard Cohen mould, and it's something which hasn't wavered even at the age of 72.

On his latest album Free, Iggy uses warm jazz-inflected textures and ambient synth effects to highlight his voice. The album is a mix of trademark tunes and poetry recitations. Somewhere, one feels he's overdone the latter, as the second half is filled with spoken verse. This may restrict the album’s broader appeal.

Iggy is fantastic on his recitation of the Lou Reed-penned ‘We Are The People’, where he thunders, “We are the people without land, we are the people without tradition, we are the people who do not know how to die peacefully and at ease.” Backed by Leron Thomas’ trumpet line, the piece turns out to be exquisite. In fact, Thomas has written most pieces on this album, and guitarist Noveller (real name Sarah Lipstate) produces some lush soundscapes.

The trumpet is a regular feature, beginning with the title track, where Iggy sings only one line, “I wanna be free.” The tempo picks up on ‘Love’s Missing’, but the highlights of the first half are the infectious ‘Sonali’ (wonder who that Indian-sounding protagonist is) and ‘James Bond’, where a man wants a female boss. The words “She wants to be your James Bond, well it’s not for a price and it’s not to be nice, she wants to be your James Bond” lend commercial appeal.

A low point is ‘Dirty Sanchez’, where Iggy talks of his hatred for online porn. Though he tries to use a vintage punk flavour, the song is cacophonous and crowded with a surfeit of choruses. However, the rendition of poet Dylan Thomas’ ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ is marvellous.

Though Iggy sounds amazing on this and ‘We Are The People’, he goes in for an excess of the poetry part. The pieces ‘Page’ and ‘The Dawn’ may impress on early listening, but sound monotonous after a while. A few more hook-filled numbers would have certainly added value to Free.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gig review/ Deep Purple in Bengaluru

Image
BY NARENDRA KUSNUR  Deep Purple at Bandland  Genre : Rock Details : Bandland rock festival, Embassy International Riding School, Bengaluru, December 17 Organisers : BookMyShow Live  Rating : **** 1/2 We all came out to Bandland, on a Bengaluru riding ground, to shoot videos on a mobile, yeah, capture the classic rock sound. Ian Gillan and the Purples, were at the best place around, space-truckin' on a black night, we danced on dusty ground.. singing, Smoke On The Water, drones in the sky, Smoke On The Water... taan taan taan, taan taan tadaan, taan taan tadaan, taan taan... Three days after British rockers Deep Purple enchanted the crowd at the Bandland rock festival in Bengaluru, the gooseflesh lingers like the whiff of cologne. For many, they have been college heroes, cocktail companions, the kings of melodic power, the epitome of hard rock. Older-generation fans or youngsters, they knew many of these songs by heart. Every word, every instrumental passage, every back-up vocal lin
Read more

Gig review/ Sting @ Lollapalooza

Image
BY NARENDRA KUSNUR   Sting @   Lollapalooza   Genre : Rock/ pop-rock Details : Mahalakshmi Race Course, Mumbai, January 28 Rating : **** You'll forget the sun in its jealous sky, as we walk on fields of gold... The sun had set a long ago, and the walk had been tiring and endless. But everything changed around 8.20 pm when Gordon Sumner aka Sting marched on to the Budweiser stage with a message in a bottle. For the next 85 minutes, every little thing the Englishman in Mumbai did was magic. The green carpet in front of the stage had been converted into fields of gold. The hardcore Sting fans should get those puns, and there were plenty of them who watched his concluding act at the two-day Lollapalooza music festival at the Mahalakshmi Race Course, Mumbai, on Sunday. Some had attended his shows abroad, some were seeing him for the first time, and others had been present at Mumbai's Rang Bhavan in 1980, when he played with his band The Police, or at the Amnesty International festiv
Read more

Gig review/ L. Shankar

Image
BY NARENDRA KUSNUR Artiste : L Shankar & Group Concert : Aditya Birla Group Masters of Music  Genre : Fusion/ Carnatic  Details : June 16, Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, Mumbai  Rating : ***** The sudden excitement was palpable when violinist L. Shankar announced that he and his group would play many Shakti tunes at Sunday's concert in Mumbai. He had already opened the evening with a dazzling rendition of Carnatic composer Muthuswamy Dikshitar's 'Vathapi Ganapathim', and if one thought he would focus on classical fare, that was not to be. Five of the remaining six pieces belonged to the repertoire of the original Shakti line-up, comprising him, guitarist John McLaughlin, tabla genius Zakir Hussain and ghatam maestro Vikku Vinayakram. Together, they had pioneered the Indo-jazz fusion sound in the 1970s, before going different paths over a decade later. Playing those old Shakti classics had a major issue though, at least for fans. They had originally been written for two mel
Read more