Iggy Pop at All Together Now: untamed, cathartic and still refusing to play by the rules

Iggy Pop

All Together Now

★★★★★

Iggy Pop is at 76 one of the oldest artists to headline an Irish festival. But musicians half his age would do well to conjure anything like the combative vitality that he brings to a knockout set at All Together Now. His performance is both a celebration of his half-century-plus as punk-pop’s original innovator and a reminder he isn’t going to go quietly into the sunset.

He brings down the curtain at Curraghmore in a blaze of gnarled, playful glory. Pop released an excellent new album, Every Loser, at the start of the year – but there is no need to worry about that. He’s here for the hits. To that end, he blitzes through solo classics and material by his band, The Stooges, with stunning ferocity.

He comes on stage – shirtless, of course – to the strains of his band member Sarah Lipstate droning on her guitar with a violin bow. That avant-garde moment is steam-rolled as Pop plunges into an obscure-ish album track, Five Foot One. It reads like his message to the world: “I’m only five foot one,” he snarls, “and I’m doing the things a five-foot man can do.”

Pop is assisted by a blistering band, who amplify Passenger and Lust For Life with cascading guitars and blaring horns. It is a thrilling din created in the image of Pop, who, if visibly scarred by time, nonetheless stalks the stage with a primordial menace.

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He draws heavily on Stooges favourites, starting with the rumbling T.V. Eye and then with the pulverising Raw Power and Gimme Danger. “Ireland, thanks for showing up,” he growls, later promising the audience, “We’re not going on a holiday, we’re going on a death trip”.

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That is by way of introducing the 1988 wrecking ball tune of the same name. But from there, it’s Stooges all the way to bedtime. He romps through I Wanna Be Your Dog and Search and Destroy – battle-hardened belters that showcase his ageless voice and determination not to exit without a fight.

When it comes to musicians defying age, the kudos tend to go to Mick Jagger, Springsteen and other prestige rockers. But Pop remains as vigorous as any stadium showboater and, on the final night of All Together Now, is the consummate rock ‘n’ roll outsider: untamed, cathartic and still refusing to play by the rules.