Album of the Week: Iggy Pop stays vital on ‘Every Loser’

Name: Iggy Pop - Every Loser
Rating: 4

Tyler Golsen

Thu 5 January 2023 19:30, UK

Iggy Pop - 'Every Loser'

It just doesn’t make any sense. The man is 75 years old. He’s spent literal decades under the influence of drugs that have killed men twice his size. He’s slashed himself bloody in every conceivable way. And yet, despite these counts against him, Iggy Pop is not only alive but healthy, energetic, and full of inspiration. Keith Richards gets most of the focus when we talk about eternal rock stars, but Iggy Pop is the truest of all rock and roll survivors.

But surviving isn’t what Pop is concerned with, at least not on his 19th studio album, Ever Loser. As he succinctly puts it in the song ‘Comments’, “The problem with life is that it stops.” Pop isn’t just looking to be thankful that he’s still around: he’s out to prove that he’s still got the goods. With more than five decades of music in his rearview mirror, it’s remarkable just how fresh an album like Every Loser sounds when you put it on for the first time.

Of course, Pop is such a legend now that he doesn’t need a full-time band to back him up anymore. Pop’s door has always been open for friends and admirers to step inside his world, but the precedent was really set when 2016’s Post Pop Depression featured members of Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys, and The Dead Weather as his band. Every Loser features some of the best rock musicians in the world helping out Pop any way they can, from Chad Smith and Duff McKagan to Travis Barker and the late Taylor Hawkins.

Pop’s last album, 2019’s Free, was more poetic and moody than what he’s usually known for. Free was the kind of album that mature musicians would write when they want to reflect on their life. Needless to say, maturity was never Pop’s area of expertise. Free lacked that essential spark that makes Iggy Pop who he is – a danger, a wildness, a Raw Power, if you will.

Luckily, Pop recognised that and dispensed with some of the unnecessary dark emotions that rounded out Free. No longer concerned with his mortality, Pop frees himself to let loose and have a good time on Every Loser. From the cursing to the numerous dick references to the palpable good time being had by all, Every Loser is the platonic ideal of what partying with Iggy Pop should sound like.

Interestingly, Pop seems deadset on giving nods to every phase of his career throughout the 11 tracks on Every Loser. ‘Frenzy’ gives a new metal punch to his signature brand of stripped-back punk rock, ‘Strung Out Johnny’ has quite a bit of Pop’s art rock stylings from The Idiot, and ‘Morning Show’ is almost exactly a modern-day update of his 1990 single ‘Candy’. ‘Modern Day Rip Off’ even has the same barrelhouse piano that was first heard on ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’.

But Every Loser isn’t a rehash of Pop’s past. Instead, Pop channels all the best elements that make him a unique artist and polishes them up for a new LP. Even as a man approaching his eighth decade of life, Pop’s vocal range and sonic curiosities remain pristine. His whiny high register soars on tracks like ‘All The Way Down’, while his gravely baritone growl reaches new depths on ‘Morning Show’. Pop’s talent for spoken word gets numerous showcases throughout the album and can best be heard on the intro to ‘New Atlantis’, plus the album’s two interludes, ‘The News For Andy’ and ‘Me Animus Interlude’.

I’m torn on how to take the interludes. They’re amusing enough in passing, but they wind up holding the album back from working as a complete whole. They’re songs that are too short on content and meaning to be anything more than filler, but they’re not stupid or annoying enough to really focus on too much. They show up and are gone in a flash, and even though Every Loser would probably benefit from their exclusion, they do add a certain bit of character to the album as well.

The meat and potatoes of the album are in the nine full-length songs that show that Pop is still one of the most vital voices in music. Without any concern for his legacy, Pop is as loose, funny, and captivating as he’s ever been on Every Loser. Every time he talks about piss or waving his dick around, you still feel like he could do it the way he shocked Detroit audiences all the way back in the 1960s. Iggy Pop is still an unpredictable force of nature, and anyone who needs reminding of that needs to put on Every Loser as soon as possible.

As it turns out, Pop isn’t that good at trying to square up his image. He’s better at letting it all hang out, singing about drugs and punks and pure energy while a cast of top-shelf musicians help bring his songs to life. That’s exactly what Pop gives us on Every Loser. Through that path, he can be as self-aware and shit-kicking as he pleases. Really, isn’t that what we all want from Jim Osterberg?