Well Iggy Pop has done it again.   Like Bowie and Dylan he just keeps surprising us and gets better and better.   His newest album (2019), FREE, is a real breakaway from previous efforts – jazz textures abound.   His primary collaborators are soundscape guitarist Noveller and jazz trumpeter Leron Thomas.   Pop only co-wrote 3 of the 10 tracks.    As he wrote in the liner notes he “…wanted an album in which other artists speak for me, but I lend my voice.”  And what a voice it is.   In addition to the three tracks he co-wrote he sings/speaks the words of Leron Thomas, Lou Reed and Dylan Thomas.

I find myself repeatedly listening to this album.  I find it deeply moving. Here are a quartet of tracks.

Starting with the title track FREE which Pop co-wrote with Leron Thomas

Next is the poem WE ARE THE PEOPLE, written by Lou Reed and was published post-humously.

We are the people without land
We are the people without tradition
We are the people
Who do not know how to die peacefully and at ease
We are the thoughts of sorrows
Endings of tomorrows
We are the wisps of rulers
And the jokers of kings
We are the people without right
We are the people who have known only lies and desperation
We are the people without a country, a voice, or a mirror
We are the crystal gaze
Returned through the density and immensity of a berserk nation
We are the victims of the untold manifesto of the lack of depth
Of full and heavy emptiness
We are the people without sorrow
Who have moved beyond national pride and indifference
To a parody of instinct
We are the people who are desperate
Beyond emotion because it defies thought
We are the people
Who conceive our destruction and carry it out lawfully
We are the insects of someone else’s thought
A casualty of daytime, nighttime, space, and God
Without race, nationality, or religion
We are the people, and the people, the people

And now for something a little lighter – JAMES BOND, written by Leron Thomas. I nominate Iggy to do the theme song for the next James Bond film. What do you think?

And to round out this post here is a classic poem by Dylan Thomas,
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT.

And do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Though wise men at their end know dark is right
Because their words had forked no lightning
They do not go gentle into that good night
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight
And learn too late, they grieved it on its way
Do not go gentle into that good night
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
And you, my father, there on the sad height
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light