Album Review: Iggy & The Stooges - Ready To Die

Heavy weighs the crown. Since Iggy reformed The Stooges, and has now added classic '73-era James Williamson back into the mix, the pressure to impress has been high. Live, there's no arguing they've succeeded this. On the record though? Less so.

Williamson's presence is made known immediately, on the very Raw Power reminiscent opening track Burn. The riff is groovy and has the classic chainsaw edge that makes the “Iggy & The Stooges” moniker arguably more powerful than “The Stooges”. It doesn't quite hit home, but it comes close.

It's depressing that's about as good as it gets. On Job Iggy pines, “If I was joking would it be funny?” This is a frustratingly telling line, even if it wasn't written to be so. If this was Iggy taking the piss on us all, worshiping a man in his mid-60s acting like he's 24, would that make the whole thing better? Even on relatively light and fun Gun, an odd album highlight, when he sings “If I had a fuckin' gun I could shoot at everyone”, the venom is lacking. That's the sort of lyric that could drip with punk rock vulgarity and power, but it's depressingly monotone and half mumbled through here.

The less said about the odd country experimentation of Unfriendly World the better. Pop knows how to experiment, his recent French lounge work shows that, but here he really misses the mark.

There isn't anything truly abhorrent about the album – it runs loops around 2007's The Weirdness. But is that all we're comfortable asking of Iggy? Those first three albums, Raw Power in particular comparison here, are still powerful, intimidating pillars of proto-punk rock greatness. Painful as it is, the group are better left as a live nostalgia act.