The Weirdness
Label: Virgin
Length: LP
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Weirdness, The
They’ve stayed true to themselves. In the end, that’s all you can ask. The lightning in the bottle the Stooges caught with their three studio albums back at the turn of the ’70s wasn’t something you plan and it isn’t something you re- create. It happened; it’s over; move on. That said, The Weirdness, their first real album since 1973’s Raw Power, is no disgrace. New bassist Mike Watt never gets in the way, and the group’s new material is as single-minded and messy as you would expect. Fun House guest Steve Mackay joins up on sax and somehow Brendan Benson adds a harmony to ‘Free and Freaky.â?� Unfortunately it’s recorded by Steve ‘Sounds like a demo tape, spins like a CDâ?� Albini, so the vocals are buried, dynamics are horrendous and the drum sound is garbage-can shitty, as if poor Scott Asheton was asked to work with a faulty kick-drum pedal. Themes and titles are pure Iggy: ‘You Can’t Have Friends,â?� ‘Greedy Awful People,â?� ‘She Took My Money,â?� ‘The End of Christianity.â?� The man knows how to write a tagline. It’s closer in spirit to the Stooges’ original impulse than anything the Stones have given us in 25 years.
This article appears in Mar 14-20, 2007.