The Stooges - The Weirdness

"You can't go home again" - Thomas Wolfe

Well, as feared, it was too good to be true. Stooges reunion with Ashton back, and Mike Watt on bass? My hopes for Stooges whiplash grinding reigned in with Minutemen precision are dashed: this is the new Iggy album.

It picks up with his Kill City era and then morphs into one of his solo efforts, albeit one of the friskier ones. I think it's firstly his vocals; instead of singing the slow numbers in the style of 'we will fall' from their debut, he's singing in his later-period 'whacky old Iggy' style. And the faster songs don't have that aspirated bite you got on 'TV eye' or 'Search & Destroy'. Secondly the lyrics are the usual Iggy soul-searching/polemics, not the surreal, claustrophobic, sex howls of the original LPs.

At least 'The end of Christianity' sounds like it could have made the track order on 'Raw power'. 'Mexican guy' would get higher marks if it wasn't a retread of '1970'. And on 'Passing cloud' the sax sounds like Kenny G, for crying out loud...Albini must have been gnawing his fist at that point (great drum sound, as always).

Overall, not bad as an Iggy album, but if this is the 21st century Stooges give me Queens of the Stone Age anyday...