If you view the Stooges' new album, The Weirdness, as the successor to 1973's Raw Power—generally regarded as one of the most important hard rock albums ever—it is a failure and a disappointment. Until they disbanded in 1974, the Stooges were one of the most original, inspired and hard rocking bands of the time, and are often cited as the first true punk band. Each one of their three albums is considered a classic, regularly making it onto ""Best...EVER!"" lists of all kinds.
So if you compare The Weirdness to these previous efforts... yeah, it's a piece. But let's face the facts—nearly a quarter century has passed since this group was together, and though lead singer Iggy Pop has had several fantastic solo albums in the meantime, none of them managed to combine hard riffs and inspired stupidity like the Stooges did—in fact, few of them even tried to.
The Weirdness is evidence that it's more than individual talent and personality that make a band: It's the time period. The Stooges invoked simple riffs, dumb lyrics and chaotic playing as an antidote to the arty extremes of hippie culture and the gradual softening of music that accompanied the singer/songwriter takeover at the beginning of the '70s. Not to say lame feel-good music has disappeared today, but the revolution the Stooges started has largely been absorbed into mainstream culture.
The Weirdness doesn't push things further for today's audience, which isn't necessarily a death sentence except for the fact that this lack of purpose seems implicit in each member's playing. Brothers Scott and Ron Asheton turn in solid performances on drums and lead guitar, respectively, but nowhere is their playing as loose and deeply sexual as on classic tracks like ""Dirt,"" ""T.V. Eye"" or ""Search and Destroy."" Mike Watt fills in on bass here and Steve Mackay—who played the sax with free-form abandon on their best album, 1970's Fun House—returns for a few tracks: both perform adequately.
The truth is that Iggy ruins this album. The songs he gives to this band are just too weak to leave much of any impression. What can you say about songs with lines like ""My dick is turning into a tree"" and ""I should believe in human nature but I don't""? Even good songs, like ""ATM"" and ""Trollin',"" are mostly notable for the musical muscle behind them than for any killer riffs or inspired lyrics.
What really kills things though is Iggy's voice. For some reason, in spite of being 60, his voice is as thin and strained as a pubescent boy. Gone are the guttural growls of Fun House and the snarling vocals of their debut, replaced with a singing style that always sounds off tone, quiet and emotionally false. And age certainly isn't the culprit, as his voice has sounded far better on recent solo albums.
It should hardly be said that The Weirdness is an embarrassment to the Stooges' legacy, however. It is an unnecessary addition to a classic discography, but it is still an enjoyable album of garage rock played by those who know what it means to play music because life would be too boring without it. Though most songs pass by without making too much of an impression, some are worthy successors. ""My Idea of Fun"" has some great fuck-the-world lyrics—""My idea of fun is killing everyone""—while ""Free & Freaky"" and ""I'm Fried"" find the band almost abandoning themselves to inspired chaos.
The production, provided by the revered Steve Albini, serves the album well. Albini opts to produce The Weirdness much like Don Gallucci did Fun House—namely, by emphasizing the musical muscle and letting it play like a live show. Although it may seem heretical to say so, the production here serves the Stooges far better than David Bowie's production on Raw Power, which tended to make things seem one-dimensional and sonically thin. It's too bad Iggy couldn't come up with a better batch of songs because The Weirdness might have been a real gift. As it is, it's worth seeking out for fans but only good for a few listens.
