Preliminaires

Iggy Pop

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 2, 2009)
• Original Release Date: June 2, 2009
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Astralwerks
• ASIN: B0023HPI1E
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,720 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Iggy Pop takes on the language of romance and puts a decidedly French twist on his new album, Préliminaires. Produced by longtime collaborator Hal Cragin (They Might Be Giants, Sarah McLachlan, Rufus Wainwright), Préliminaires, which translates to "foreplay", highlights another facet of the Iggy Pop persona, focusing more on jazz arrangements and the distinctive, rich baritone heard on classics like "Nightclubbing" and his duet with French legend Françoise Hardy on the song "I'll Be Seeing You".

On the record, Iggy even sings one song in French, a cover of jazz standard "Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves)", a song widely associated with French legends Yves Montand and Edith Piaf. Other titles include New Orleans influenced "King Of The Dogs", a story about a dog named Fox who explains "how cool it is to be a dog, and how much it beats human life", and "How Insensitive", a jazzy bossanova standard composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim. There are also more raucous moments like the swamp-rock stylings of "Nice To Be Dead".

The visuals for the album were created by French/Iranian graphic novelist and animated film director Marjane Satrapi. Marjane and Iggy met when she asked him to voice one of the characters in the English language version of her Academy-award nominated movie `Persepolis' in 2007.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jazzy,witty, haunting and intriguingly beautiful. This is POP at his finest !, June 14, 2009

By	amazon critic - See all my reviews

"Préliminaires" (a French term meaning 'foreplay') came about after Iggy Pop was approached to soundtrack a documentary about French author Michel Houellebecq's attempts to film his novel The Possibility of an Island (Vintage International).
What do you get if you cross the godfather of punk with nihilistic enfant terrible of French literature, Michel Houellebecq?
How about a semi-concept album of New Orleans jazz and cabaret ballads, partly inspired by the cult French author?
Given the recent demise of best friend and fellow Stooge Ron Asheton, you can draw some interest from the preoccupation with death that pervades the new album.
Pop's 15th solo studio album finds the singer "doing ŕ la façon de Serge Gainsbourg" and crooning ballads, often in French, with occasional shades of bossa nova and New Orleans jazz.
"I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music", he claims of his inspiration. And he started listening to Louis Armstrong instead.
This is a very different album, which can be seen as a companion to the novel, pocketing themes and sometimes whole chunks of text from Houellebecq's work, and combining them with a distinctly American take on continental cool.
Iggy Pop fans who feared the worst - that the veteran rock 'n' roller had finally gone soft by doing those car insurance ads - should rest easy". -Gareth Grundy
The CD is a charming novelty, inspired by New Orleans jazz and the novelist Michel Houellebecq's nihilistic meditation, The Possibility of an Island. This combination of ingredients, though "potentially disastrous", has been fashioned into something witty and beguiling by the 61-year-old Godfather of punk rock.
It is a major about-turn for Iggy Pop. Out go guitars (mostly). In come wistful saxophones, jazz and music made to waft through a fog of Gitanes smoke in some forgotten European bar.
There are touches of modern, electronic production, but, in the main it is straight, slow-ballad jazz, with a dash of Glenn Miller.
The old Iggy makes a "fleeting appearance" in the rocker "Nice to Be Dead", and crosses the line on "King of the Dogs", a New Orleans swing number, but the rest of the time he sounds "beautifully fatigued and insightful".
"On lines such as "You can convince the world that you're some kind of superstar, when an a...ole is all you are, but that's all right," he sounds simultaneously invulnerable and immortal". - Dave Simpson
Two versions of the 1940s melancholy Parisian night-club standard by Jacques Prévert and Joseph Kosma, "Les Feuilles Mortes", open and close the album, crooned in coarse-grained French, while the solemn spoken-word piece on "A Machine For Loving" - perhaps the most interesting piece of the CD - Pop speaks Houellebecq's words - the story of a dog that dies, only to be replaced by a clone - over a dense, dusty Western soundscape. At 36 minutes, Préliminaires is slight and covers-heavy, but points to a promising new career phase for the Miami-born iconic king of punk.
His 61-year-old voice now has all the smoke-damaged, soulful power of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, oozing ennui and gallows humour.
With this one, Pop makes not just his strangest set in years, but also his best album since 1977's "Lust for Life".
My favourite tracks: "King of the Road" and "How Insensitive", a diverse, refreshing take of the Brazilian classic by legendary A.C.Jobim.
This is POP at his finest!
Lust for Life

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Le nouveau record de Iggy Pop, Préliminaires, est magnifique!, July 9, 2009

By	Jason Rose "Funhouse" (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For the first time since 1999's Avenue B. We see the mellow jazzy soul of Iggy Pop.

First off, for the record, I don't understand why critics universally put down Avenue B as a failure. I'm an Iggy fanatic, and even though Ave B is his least Iggy-like album, I personally loved it. He hooked with Medinski, Martin & Wood, and a bunch of other real musicians, and showed his senstive side. He didn't mention his [...] getting stuck deep inside anything even once. Everyone hated it, but I thought it was the best thing he's done since the 70s.

That is until Préliminaires came along. This album may even surpass the great Avenue B. But I have to listen a few more times to be certain.

Iggy employs some diverse ingedients on this album.

"King of the Dogs" is backed by some suprisingly authentic dixieland jazz. Satchmo shares a writing credit.

Iggy also tries his hand at bossanova and applies his trademark croon to Antonio Carlos Jobim's timeless chestnut "How Insensitive."

And just like Ave B had a searing cover of "Shaking All Over" for the rockers, Préliminaires includes "It's Nice To Be Dead" as it's sole asskicker.

I love the blues number "He's Dead She's Alive." The production is as rustic as some dusty old Blind Lemon Jefferson recording from the Mississippi delta. The acoustic guitar is so shrill and so raw--like my speakers somehow transformed into a shanty of rusty corregated iron. I don't know how that would actually sound, but imagine it would be real creaky.

The rest of the cuts are a bouillabaisse of French pop chanson old and new. Aromatic notes of Edith Piaf mingle with musty Air with an icy broth recalling both The Idiot and 80s Leonard Cohen. Mwah! C'est magnifique! It's a superb dish!

If there can be anything negative to say about this record, it would be about it's short length. It's only 36 minutes and two songs are performed twice in two different arrangments. But like they say, it ain't the size of your oar but the motion in the ocean. I think albums these days are too long anyway. In the vinyl era, albums were only 35-40 minutes and that was perfect. Besides, gourmet French cusine is always served in neat small portions with no filler. Brief is good. I don't need no forty hour Sandinista.

In conclusion, Préliminaires is Iggy's classiest, most mature record to date. He should explore this side of his music further. A man in his 60s can continue to be a howling shirtless wildman for only so long. This is the sound of Iggy finally growing old gracefully. Et ça sonne bien.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not a one-trick dog, June 4, 2009

By	Charles A. Miller (Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

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If you are expecting Skull Ring or The Stooges, don't buy this. And don't bitch about it either. If that's what you want to hear, just put those albums on and be happy there's so much of it. It's about time we heard more of the "other side" of Iggy Pop... the part where he can write intelligent lyrics and back it up with strong musical content.

Preliminaires was written, and in some cases, sung for the French, where Iggy has his biggest following. Pre-release hype claimed it be Iggy's first jazz album. Well, yes, there's Euro jazz here, but there's also plenty of rock and lots and lots of acoustic work too. And perhaps most importantly, some of the most unusual lyrics ever recorded: premeditated, yet sounding completely spontaneous as the finished product.

No, this is not The Stooges or Skull Ring... this is utterly different material for Iggy Pop. Listen to the samples to get an idea. It will give you the gist, but remember, those are 30 second excerpts that do not give you the complete picture. Listening to the complete tracks in complete album form leaves you wanting for more in the future and wondering why a project as great as this was not done sooner.

It's very short; clocking in at 36 minutes with flimsy packaging. This is reflected in how inexpensive it is. But that does not deminish the overall impact of this most different of Iggy Pop releases, something I hope there will be more of in the future. Highly recommended to those who can appreciate ALL the talent that Iggy Pop has... this man is no one-trick-dog.