Reviews of the album(from sites and magazines)

I just found this one

Quote :

He's sixty, you know. But Iggy's still got it - sort of.


People who terrified me as a kid: Mr Cox, Iggy Pop and Rolf Harris.

Mr Cox because he was a sadistic little git who became a teacher to indulge his hatred of children (but I’ve come to terms with that, oh yes . . .); Rolf Harris because of his cheery, beardy didgeridoo-strangeness; and Iggy because he was the first singer I’d ever seen (and this was post-Stooges) who genuinely didn’t give a fuck if I liked him or not, who looked at me and everyone else with a wired, wiry, scarred-armed, bare-chested, hippy-hating contempt and a self-contained nihilistic rage that was bottled up in a punk container that seemed to have little of the rock’n’rollness of the Clash, little of the cartoonness of the Dolls or the Ramones or the Damned, little of the distanced, sneering cabaret knowingness of Rotten/Lydon, little of the reverent, soul-60’s sensibility of the Jam. Jim Morrison was Iggy’s hero, but you could never really see that in his performances or his music. He seemed, rather, more aligned to the mutilating East Coast screams of Richard Hell, or (earlier on) the Fugs or MC5, to the painful yells of the more extreme end of the Velvets or to Sun Ra or Beefheart or Zappa but without all the jazzy cleverness. And- to be honest- I quickly placed him in the ‘I’m glad he’s there and I know he’s important and iconic and all that but I can live life without him . . .’, and I turned away from him for twenty-five years (perhaps to avoid the discomfort of his certainty and fire) as he continued on his merry Bowie-helped/hindered, with Stooges/without Stooges, over-produced/under-produced, drugged-up/drugged-up way.

Until now.

When I expected- what? Well . . . I expected (from reports of the band's live shows over the last couple of years) scratchy, distorted, widdling lead guitar over hard, hard punk-blues rhythm riffing, functional bass and drums propping up an angry old man spitting out invigorating barely-in-tune bile and sarcasm at a world that he never felt part of and never wanted him. I expected skinny-powerful, drug-addled-smart, focused-apathetic, lean-muscular, out-of-time, messy, self-harming, three-chord idiotically visceral raw power, libidinous and labile, hurt and sadistic, way, way over the border. I expected no hint that any more music had been made after 1980, no pansy bleeding electronica, no hip-hop, no Smithsy jangle, no Nirvana even, no nothing but the basics. What I expected was that we’d both have grown older, but only one of us had changed . . .

And some of that power and purity, some of those extremes, some of that stubborn, individualistic, idiosyncratic fuck-youness is still there: the first four tracks here make a nicely slicing, deliciously burning, winkingly spirited assault on all the crap that’s happened in all our lives, all the crap that passes for music, for rebellion, for anger, for art. Those first twelve minutes or so it’s like nothing’s changed- he’s still (quite) scary (despite the thin reediness of his voice) and still making me righteously uncomfortable, albeit with the help of music that’s now familiar, unapologetically nostalgic, more overtly rooted in the sped-up rock’n’roll that punk always really was. Trollin', the first track, is typical: catchy(ish) mid-tempo rock, undercut with feedback and snarl, original Stooges the Asheton brothers propelling things loosely along; You Can't Have Friends is rough-hewn, flat-sung, live-sounding with neat little references to Britpunk; ATM is noisy and Dollsy (‘Don’t bullshit a bullshitter’); My Idea Of Fun ( '. . . is killing everyone') sees Ron Asheton’s guitar in metallic question-and-answer mode with Iggy’s nihilistic/anti-war (it’s hard to tell) words. Good stuff. One-dimensional, but good stuff.

If he’d stopped here (and maybe added in the fabulous, steaming psychobilly of later track, Mexican Guy) the album would’ve been a pretty decent pop-punk return, a more than listenable shake-up. But the slowed-up mid-period Bowie pastiche, Weirdness (which contains nothing of the sort) comes dimly, despondently along and slowly sucks the life out of the listener and, it turns out, much of the rest of the album. The following Free And Freaky isn’t either really, it’s musically formulaic, post-punkjokey (pokey?) clatter; Greedy Awful People, again, is clumsy satire; She Took My Money is worryingly close to big-hair metal; End Of Christianity reminds you of bad Manic Street Preachers (is that a tautology?); sax-haunted Bowie parody number two Passing Cloud is wearying old-bloke resignation. And, finally, I'm Fried finishes things off with the band sounding far too much like Chelsea or Eater or the UK Subs- Iggy means it, man, on this one but, musically, the Stooges are League 2 UK Punk.

It's over. I'm knackered. Five good ‘uns and a lot of filler. A better percentage than a lot of albums, but Iggy ain’t going to change lives in the way he once did. He’s just not terrifying any more: maybe we’ve both- we've all- moved on.

When’s Rolf’s new one out?

Release date: 05/03/07
Artist website: www.iggypop.com
Label: Virgin

Great reading. Thanks for posting.

allmusic.com wrote:

The creative and interpersonal dynamics of a rock band are notoriously tricky, and when a band hasn't worked together for a few decades, simply getting the same people together in a recording studio doesn't guarantee lightning is going to strike again. In 2003, more than 30 years after the original lineup of the Stooges collapsed after the commercial failure of Fun House, Iggy Pop finally buried the hatchet with his former bandmates Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton, and they hit the road for a series of heroic reunion shows (with Mike Watt standing in on bass for the late Dave Alexander) in which they miraculously re-created the dinosaur-stomp sound and feel of their first two albums. After the riotous reception of the Stooges' reunion shows, Iggy and the Ashetons took the next logical step and recorded a new Stooges album, but while the reconstituted band sounded stunning on-stage (check out the Telluric Chaos CD or the Live in Detroit 2003 DVD for evidence), in the studio the Stooges reunion went horribly awry with 2007's The Weirdness. It would have been foolish to expect The Weirdness to sound just like The Stooges or Fun House, given how much water has flowed under the bridge, but what's startling is how little this album recalls the primal groove of their previous work (or the sound they recently delivered on-stage). While Ron Asheton's guitar howls as loud as ever, the pulsating wah-wah and ripsaw fuzz that were his aural trademarks are all but missing, and while his solos step back into the noisy id, they lack the coherence and internal logic of his brilliant work on Fun House. Similarly, Scott Asheton's drumming is muscular and his timing is superb, but while he created an unexpectedly sensuous groove out of stuff like "Down in the Street," "1969," and "Real Cool Time," here he stomps away with lots of gravity but little nuance, and like his brother, he's traded soul for jackhammer force (emphasized by Steve Albini's hard-edged recording). But surprisingly, the guy who really drops the ball on this set is Iggy. Pop's been in fine voice on his last few solo albums, but much of The Weirdness finds him singing a bit flat or sharp, and while he belts out these songs with commendable passion, this ranks with Beat Em Up as the dumbest set of lyrics the man has ever committed to tape. Instead of reaching into the Real O Mind for the cosmic simplicity of stuff like "TV Eye," "1970," or "I Wanna Be Your Dog," Iggy goes into inane blather mode from the jump-start, and if titles like "Greedy Awful People," "Free and Freaky," and "I'm Fried" don't tip off listeners that he's off his game, lines like "England and France, these cultures are old/The cheese is stinky and the beer isn't cold," "They drive those f*ckin' awful cars/And roll their lips in titty bars," and the deathless "My dick is turning into a tree" tell the rest of the story. While Ron and Scott may not be at their best here, when they connect (and sometimes they do) you can imagine The Weirdness might have been an OK rock album, especially with Mike Watt's solid, workmanlike basslines and Steve Mackay's free-skronk saxophone. Iggy's songs, however, sink this particular ship, and if this doesn't conclude the Stooges saga on as crushing a note as Metallic K.O. brought down the curtain on their first era, there's no denying The Weirdness is a major disappointment that puts a real chink in this great band's legacy..

Interesting with the review is that they gave the CD 3/5.

Here's a link to the RS Review. They're surprisingly positive for RS.
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/13502342/review/13711225/the_weirdness

Gimme some skin: About the Rolling stone review. The same thing goes for the swedish medias. People are saying that they're dissapointed in the album, but it has some songs that's almost -up there!
The album has gotten more or little less 3/5 from every swedish reviewer!

Three different reviews here:

http://www.i94bar.com/stooges.html

Some cross-posted blog stuff:

http://stashdauber.blogspot.com
http://thebarmansrant.blogspot.com

I know Q magazine gave it 2/5 stars.

Mojo magazine gave it 4/5 stars.

One of the free London papers gave it 3/5.

Katy: What did Mojo have to say about it? 4/5 is quite a score for The weirdness.

I was kind of surprized to see Mojo give it that score too. I typed it up, here's the review in full:

Cash from chaos
Ann Arbor's wildest have cut a new LP, three decades after the last one. By Manish Agarwal

The Stooges
****
The Weirdness (Virgin)

Ignored at the time, the first three Stooges records are now seen as proto-punk landmarks: 1969's deadpan nihilistic debut; 1970's molten masterpiece Funhouse and 1973's sleazy, volatile Raw Power. Each one was different, but all of them united disaffected thought and visceral expression, their songs becoming standards for generations of iconoclastic upstarts. Trying to extend such a pioneering hot streak is surely risking bathos?
Happily, this particular group of revered geezers is not inhibited by history. Most reunion shows are stifled by a need to maintain the legend. In contrast, since reforming in 2003, The Stooges have performed at maximum volume with a minimum of nostalgia, obliterating expectations by simply being themselves. As Iggy Pop noted during the making of this album: "When you put something before the public, you're like a kid going to high school for another day. If you were a cheerleader Monday, you damn well better bring those pompoms Tuesday."
Save for one enforced change - Minutemen bassist Mike Watt replaces the late Dave Alexander - this is the original line-up: Scott 'Rock Action' Asheton (drums), older brother Ron (guitar) and Iggy on vocals. Steve Albini's tough, unvarnished recording doesn't try to modernise the quartet's elemental chemistry, ensuring that these 12 tunes pack an almighty sonic punch. 'Trollin' sets the tone, the Ashetons churning up a concrete slab of riff'n'rhythm as Iggy cruises the streets for action: "I got the top down on my Cadillac/My sweetest t-shirt is riding my back/Rock critics wouldn't like this at all/I guess my faith is right in my balls." The singer turns 60 this year, but his core concerns are still getting laid and trying to get paid, 'ATM''s superhero strut claiming that, "The Stooges fight poverty in secret."
An undervalued lyricist, Iggy can take society's temperature with one hand and flip it the bird with the other. Garage punk sing-alongs 'Free & Freaky' and 'Greedy Awful People' pledge allegiance to outsider America while kicking against the neocon pricks; 'My Idea Of Fun''s topical sarcasm - "now is the season for war with no reason" - is amplified by Ron's blistering axe. The wah-wah-crazed guitarist sounds righteous whether he's spotlighting Iggy's basso profundo on the title track's downer blues or wallowing in gutter-psych grime with Funhouse saxophonist Steve Mackay ('Passing Cloud', 'I'm Fried').
You could argue that this is reinventing the wheel, but that misses the point. 'The Weirdness' is the sound of a working band, rock'n'roll lifers doing what they need to do in the here and now. On those terms, no matter what, The Stooges are still hard to beat.

Nah. The reviewers don't get it. It's what the fans think. Sales don't lie.