THE STOOGES
The Weirdness
Virgin/EMI
· The only weird thing is why this waste has The Stooges name on it.
In many ways, The Stooges can be compared to Michael Jordan. At the height of their games, both were the archetypes and respective masters of their medium – The Stooges at garage rock and Jordan at schooling suckers on the hardwood. Both had magical, perfect-length legacies – The Stooges with their original three groundbreaking albums, and Jordan with his storybook fade-away J at the buzzer to beat the Jazz for his sixth NBA championship. Then, His Airness came out of retirement again to become average to awful. The Stooges, it seems, have now done the same thing.
On The Weirdness (and since 2003), Iggy Pop has been re-joined by the band’s original lineup of Ron Asheton on guitar, Scott Asheton on drums, Funhouse’s Steve Mackay on sax, and Mike Watt replacing the late Dave Alexander on bass. Their current live shows are indeed ferocious, but once you get these geezers into the studio (even with Steve Albini behind the boards), describing them as stifled would be an understatement. Yet, despite how dad-rock Scott sounds, how straightforward Ron pounds and how surprisingly workmanlike Watt plays his four-string, the real atrocities here are Iggy’s irritating vocals and idiotic, verging-on-unbelievable, lyrics.
"Trollin" sets the tone with some boring, bluesy riffage and two of the album’s most telling lines, "rock critics wouldn’t like this at all" (he’s right) and "my dick is turning into a tree" (too much infomation, Iggy). From here, Mr. Pop riffs on hypocritical rock stars and how much money he has ("ATM"), SUV drivers and "scoring your piece of ass" ("Greedy Awful People"), and Dr. Phil helping regain his sanity ("Mexican Guy").
There are interesting musical moments, but unfortunately any songs with real potential, like "My Idea of Fun" and "Free & Freaky" (featuring Brendan Benson on backing vox), are again ruined by lyrics like "England and France, these countries are old/ The cheese is stinky and the beer ain’t cold." "Passing Cloud" and the title track find Iggy crooning in his old Bowie-inspired style (a la "Gimme Danger" and "The Passenger"), but simply don’t connect in the way those songs still do.
Finally, the middle section of closer "I’m Fried" finds Ron and Mackay caterwauling with their old Funhouse abandon, but it’s just too little, too late. Jordan should stay behind the bench, and Iggy and co. should definitely steer clear of the studio.
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