The (Almost) French Connection: Bonjour, C'est Monsieur Pop Qui Vous Propose De La Musique Populaire Aujourd'hui...

Iggy's recent cameo on this site - to duet with recently departed Catherine Ringer of Les Rita Mitsouko - and especially his chatming attempts at speaking French reminded me of this little bijou. If the Iggy of the 70's is known as a devil-may-care spit-and-blood berzerker on stage (and off of it), the James Osterberg of the 2000's is a decidedly different fellow. If he occasionally indulges in loud and noisy rock it almost always seems to be with some invisible quotation marks around it. See, guys, I can 'still rock', in a sort of half-nostalgic, half-ironic way. But I suspect his heart isn't that much in it anymore. From time to time, he plays the noisy Iggy of old, but it's almost like your friendly but decidedly weird uncle at a family reunion getting out a football and arthritis be damned wants to show off his moves from when he was a football star in high school. That said, on 2023's Every Loser Pop he lets it rip with an all-star band for support.

You wouldn't be able to tell from the first twenty years or so of his career, that really, James Osterberg was a crooner at heart, who just tried to get out under the maniac and increasingly scarred skin suit the Popster donned for those first twenty years of his career. I'd argue that when he teamed up with future dad rock great Don Was in 1990, this was really the beginning of crooner Pop, some swerves into noise - with and without the reformed Stooges - notwithstanding. But the number of collaborations outside of the noisy rock spectrum, his penchant for unexpected covers and rather unexpected sonic explorations in the last three decades and change really made you think that Iggy Pop as elder statesman of rock is a very different beast from the classic Iggy. And why wouldn't he be? Once he hit middle age, and now senior citizenship status, is there still a point in doing the wild man on stage? Not for your hips and back, for sure, but probably also not for your musical spirit. So he spent basically the entire 2010's as a crooner before the aforementioned rock'n'roll comeback at a sprightly 75 years of age. 

Pop explains the why pretty succinctly in his liner notes: "All popular music forms of today get their strength from the beat. Rap, hip-hop, metal, pop and rock producers will tell you that the beats they use imitate the human heartbeat and that is where the power lies. The feeling of listening to any of these forms is always some variation on excitement, but before the birth of the blues there was another form of popular song, in which the timing comes from the human breath and the feelings are much more about emotion." He also adresses the elephant in the room, as far as song choices: "Many of these songs are in French, probably because it is French culture which has most stubbornly resisted the mortal attacks of the Anglo-American music machine."

So, Iggy Pop the francophile elder statesman crooner. Pop had both started a real effort at a rock'n'roll-less album and his first attempts at French on 2009's Préliminaires (note the title, will ya?), which itself was a second attempt at an art-rock album after 1999's Avenue B, with a cover of "Les Feuilles Morts", but he really plunges into the Seine of memory  on Après, while also repurposing 60's chestnuts like "Everybody's Talkin'" or "Only The Lonely". You want Pop do Gainsbourg? Check. Joe Dassin? Check. Brassens? Check. Piaf? Of course. And then, for an Anglo-Gallic marriage, The Beatles' "Michelle", naturally, probably the first song that gave Anglophile audiences un goût de la France, so to speak. 

So, is ol' man Pop the best crooner of all time? No sir, Frank Sinatra he decidedly is not. But is Après a very fun diversion, du bon divertissement, comme on dirait chez nous? Ah, ça oui, absolument. Pop is trying, and his croon warble has a real charme to it, much like the so-so at best French pronounciation. Pop might be somewhat of an enthusiastic dilletant when he's trying to evoke a French-English mix pop record, with more than a few jazz influences, from the 1960's with Après. As it would have been in the 60's, Après is an exceedingly short record, not even hitting the 30 minute mark, although with two extra tracks not on the original edition, they creep over the 35 minute mark. The first of these, a lovely cover of Sacha Distel's "La Belle Vie" was a digital bonus track I believe, then added to the tenth anniversary edition, while his duet of "I'll Be Seeing You" with the late, great Françoise Hardy was a one-off from 2000, but - unlike "Les Feuilles Mortes", which I didn't include for that reason - fits the tone and sound of the album perfectly. 

So, here's Après (with a little something ajouté après), for a hopefully lovely autumn stroll this weekend, for real, or in your mind and musical memories. See yourself walking down along the Seine in the late 60s or early 70s, while Monsieur Osterberg softly croons in your ears. Elle n'est pas belle, la vie?