Month: January 2020

Iggy’s second Bowie-produced LP was cut in Berlin in 1977, the year that the punk wave that Iggy began with the Stooges years earlier had finally exploded. By the time Lust for Life came around, Iggy had grown beyond the scrappy Detroit punk that defined his early career and his sound had acquired an intellectual element that defied the violent primordialism of the Stooges. While Pop still rocks hard here on tracks like the eponymous Lust For Life (which became a hit many years later after its prominent use on the Trainspotting soundtrack), Sixteen and Some Weird Sin, there is an element of weary urban ennui in tracks like the Passenger and Turn Blue. This, combined with Bowie’s krautrock-inspired production and the pair’s obvious chemistry as songwriters, creates an album that plays to Iggy’s strengths – his showmanship and energy, but augments them with occasional vulnerability and pushes him into new sonic territory. Along with his previous album The Idiot, Lust For Life is Iggy’s finest solo offering and defined his sound and persona for the rest of his career.

Before their sex was on fire, Kings of Leon were a rag-tag bunch of southern brothers (and cousin) with a barnstorming southern rock flavoured debut record, Youth and Young Manhood. Slotting neatly into the guitar rock revival of the early 00’s alongside the White Stripes, the Hives and the Vines, the band found themselves affectionately dubbed “the Southern Strokes” by the rock press. While Youth and Young Manhood certainly doesn’t break any sonic ground, the band seem quite content not to reinvent the wheel, instead preferring to conjure a hip-shaking barn dance with the spectres of Tom Petty, the Allman Brothers and Creedence Clearwater Revival all looming largely. The Kings’ roughly hewn southern-rock charm would fade little by little on each subsequent album in favour of slick U2-sized balladry, but here on their debut they deliver a record that does exactly what it says on the box – a well crafted set of rock n’ roll tunes about self discovery and youthful indiscretion that, while proudly wearing its influences on its sleeve, is emotional, direct and electrifying.
Key tracks: Red Morning Light, Happy Alone