There aren’t many ass-kicking live records from 75-year-old punk rockers to reference when reviewing Iggy Pop’s newest offering, Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023. It’s safe to say Pop is one of a kind, still raging hard, swearing like a drunken sailor, and delivering the smoking (and shirtless) goods onstage.
Arriving in Switzerland with a big seven-piece band, touring on the back of 2023’s respectable Every Loser, the Godfather of Punk let it all hang out. Pop delivers the hits: a few deeper cuts and a host of heavy metal meets jazz/soul numbers that rip and roar.
While Pop deserves all the flowers he gets by delivering the vocals and energy at his age, heaps of credit must also be given to this razor-sharp backing band. Comprised of Gregoire Fauque – on guitar, Sarah Lipstate (Noveller) – guitar, Florian Pellissier – keyboards, Leron Thomas – trumpet, Corey King – trombone, Kenny Ruby – bass, Thibaut Brandalise – drums, the group manages to convey the punk angst that drove Pop’s youth, the spacey zoned out feelings of his solo career and a new hybrid of soul horns and grinding metal that somehow works magically throughout this live capturing.
Opening with “Five Foot One” off 1979’s New Values, Pop doesn’t waste a moment, flipping off the crowd and getting after it to jump-start the career-spanning set. The horns pump and the drums thunder form the get go pushing tunes like “T.V. Eye” and “Death Trip”, all the way through to the sped-up finale “Frenzy”. Another new tune, “Modern Day Ripoff,” holds its own with screeching guitars next to classics like the rampaging “Raw Power,” which delivers bludgeoning brass blasts.
Pop is a whirling dervish, pumping up the crowd for “La-La-La” singalongs on the percussion/trumpet led “Passenger”, or getting everyone dancing for bass bumping “Lust For Life”. The pounding chaos recedes only for vibrating ominous bass and chest-thumping drums to take its place on “Gimme Danger.” “Endless Sea” uses ambient keys. At the same time “I’m Sick of You” is awash in warbling guitars and psychedelic freakouts until a big crashing punk middle.
That balls-to-the-wall energy keeps things from stagnating, and Pop and company are aware. “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is metal grinding on metal with crushing drums and keys plinking, “Search and Destroy” directly kicks ass over this horn/drum hybrid, while “Mass Production” uses drill-like guitars to dig deep into brain cells. Pop tells the band to ‘keep it nice and creepy’, on “Nightclubbing,” which could have probably done without a blazing solo in the middle, but guitars, horns, and the whole outfit get revved up for a late pair of Funhouse numbers, “Down on the Street” and “Loose.”
Iggy Pop has released a few live albums with varying degrees of success, yet Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 proves (somewhat surprisingly) that the rock and roll legend is still firing on all cylinders while crafting sonically dense pastures to rant over.
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Have been following Iggy Pop since high school Ann Arbor High 1970