March 26, 2009 11:53

Iggy Pop announces release date for 'jazz' album

Punk legend embraces French literature too

Iggy Pop's new album is informed by jazz, French literature and canine life.

'Préliminaires' is released on May 18 and signals a radical departure for the punk Godfather, embracing jazz and blues influences.

Pop said: "At one point I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music and I’ve started listening to a lot of New Orleans-era, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton-type of jazz. And I’ve always loved quieter ballads as well."

The record was influenced by Pop's reading of 'The Possibility Of An Island' by French novelist Michel Houllebecq.

The singer explained: “(The book) is about death, sex, the end of the human race, and some other pretty funny stuff. I read the book with intense pleasure when it came out, and in my mind, I created music that would have been the music that I would hear in my soul when I read this book."

Tracks featured include a French-language cover of 'La Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves)', 'How Insensitive' and 'King Of The Dogs', which takes The Stooges classic 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' to its natural conclusion, being about "how cool it is to be a dog, and how much it beats human life".

'Préliminaires' is French for ‘foreplay’.