Iggy Pop got rewarded for his bravery on 1999’s Avenue B – a record that showed how old punks don’t die, they just grow up to become Bukowski and Celine – with the general indifference of public and record company, hence the faux nu-metal bollocks of his last record Beat ’Em Up. For a while there it looked like Dr. Osterberg was doomed to trade on his past pedigree, turning in superlative performances on the headbanger’s ball version of the chicken-in-a-basket circuit. The facade was beginning to crack – I mean, what are we to make of a so-called icon of fuck-you who sells out his back catalogue for car ads and then whinges about the state of the radio?
Would you buy a new car from this man?
But then friends, there were mutterings, mutterings of a Stooges reformation, which became real, and which is now incarnate and available for mortal ears on a handful of tracks here. The reconstituted quarter, who by all accounts have been tearing up stages in the US and Oz over the last year, have fought shy of the swelterhouse dynamics of Funhouse in favour of recreating the sonic snarl of Raw Power on tracks like ‘Little Electric Chair’.
Other notables include the ‘Peter Gunn’ rewrite of the title track and a punk lecture in accountability called ‘Loser’, all of which exhibit an Iggy in tai chi balance with his ego, id and anima, contrasting wicked intelligence with gonzo tendencies. His touring band The Trolls are no mugs either, but the real surprise is the effectiveness of collaborations with upstarts like Green Day and Sum 41 – in the latter case, the pure pop punk of ‘Little Know It All’ is Iggy’s best shot at a hit single since ‘Candy’.
Mind you, there are a couple of duds in the last act, not least the talking blues whinge of ‘Til Wrong Feels Right’. Like most of Iggy’s product over the last decade or so, from Brick By Brick to American Caesar, Skull Ring comes out swinging but gets a little wobbly-legged in the later rounds. Buy it for the first half; take a powder after intermission.