Iggy Pop review: Veteran rocker makes welcome return to Dublin for In The Meadows

Irish Examiner

3 days ago

Iggy Pop, In the Meadows, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin
★★★★☆
The most impressive part of Iggy Pop's first Dublin show in over 20 years? That he was topless for all bar about 15 minutes of his 80-minute set. It's a cool night on the Royal Hospital Kilmainham grounds of IMMA, following some torrential showers earlier in the day, and the crowd increasingly adds layers over the course of the headline slot. But anyone who saw Iggy Pop at All Together Now 2023 knows that the old dog hasn't learned any new tricks, like dressing for the Irish weather. He's always performed topless and ain't changing now.
Iggy Pop shouldn't be here, really, when you think about it. Drug addictions and overdoses, confrontational live shows, self-mutilation, run-ins with biker gangs, and, er, rehabbing with David Bowie in Germany are all part of the lore with the Godfather of Punk, who has lived several lives even just this century. The single Lust for Life featured in Trainspotting in the late 1990s, he reunited with the Stooges in 2003, playing Slane the following year, and has hosted a weekly show on BBC 6 Music for the past 10 years.
On the airwaves, he has championed numerous bands of all genres, some of whom appear on the second installment of the In The Meadows event that he's headlining on Saturday. Lambrini Girls, Billy No Mates, and local band Sprints are all variations on punk in the 2020s. Gilla Band are too, and play their only Irish show of the year here - when Iggy Pop calls, you answer.
It's 10 years since they released their debut album, Holding Hands with Jamie, and with lyrics about wearing hats, buying 'shit clothes' in Easons, and the 'hustle to be a jack russell', you forget just how strange they are - but also how ferocious and exhilarating.
Iggy Pop on stage at In The Meadows at Kilmainham in Dublin.
Meanwhile, on the main stage, trad/metal act the Scratch are splitting the crowd down the middle for a Slipknot-esque moshpit, and then offering a heartfelt rendition of Christy Moore's Joxer Goes to Stuttgart. When it comes to limits, Irish acts, like Iggy Pop decades before them, are happy to shatter them.
Iggy Pop arrives to the guttural intro of TV Eye - taken from the Stooges' second album Funhouse, released 55 years ago. He's 78 now, the same age as US president Donald Trump, and though his voice lacks the raw power of the early 1970s and he walks with a noticeable hitch, he's still cooler than pretty much anyone else in music.
Backed by a seven-piece band, he shadowboxes, kicks his leg out, and cocks a pose throughout. It's about an hour into his set before he calls for a jacket. Of course it's thick leather and with 'Iggy' in studs on the back. It only lasts a few minutes before he tosses it away.
And how do you argue with the setlist? The Passenger, with its boisterous 'la la las', sounds like the song of every summer. 'Oh fuck, what's that?' he shouts before Lust For Life, which he follows with Death Trip, singing: 'We're going down in history.'
I Wanna be your Dog might be the greatest rock song ever written. 'I feel alright,' he shouts on 1970, performed while taking a breather on an amp; did we mention he's 78? His grizzled 6 Music voice is evident when he introduces Sick of You, explaining the song is 'about leaving home to survive and you don't even know why'.
We get a little bit of Nightclubbing, written with Bowie and later made more famous by Grace Jones. When you talk about an Iggy Pop show in 2025, you're talking about a history of pop and rock music. And the old dog's not ready to be put down any time soon.