American Caesar

IGGY POP "American Caesar" (Virgin)

I'VE JUST written a letter to Quest, the magazine which professes to unravel the mysteries of the modern scientific age. It goes, "Dear Sir or Madam, having told us about nuclear fission and why the ozone layer has more holes in it than my Y-fronts, perhaps you'd now be kind enough to explain how the fuck Iggy Pop managed to reach his 46th. birthday?"

Considering his well documented lust for life, James Newell Osterburg should never have survived puberty, yet alone gotten within sniffing distance of a bus pass, but here he is as one of rock's elder statesmen peddling an album that puts upstart nihilists like Nick Cave and Kurt Cobain to shame.

Whereas the old Iggy had only two speeds - fast and faster still - the reconstructed 1993 model knows the value of restraint and works it so that American Caesar alternates between clawing at your face and gently nibbling your ear.

No prizes for guessing where 'Wild America' enters into the grand scheme of things. Arriving in on a riff so sleazy you immediately want to take a shower, the track documents Iggy's lowlife existence with all the wide-screen technicolour kitsch of a John Waters movie. There's even a cameo appearance from Henry Rollins, though quite why he bothered when his contribution amounts to precisely half a verse, I'm not sure.

'Plastic & Concrete' and the red raw 'Boogie Boy' offer further glimpses into the past but it's the radically updated version of 'Louie Louie' which best recalls the days when yer' man bought peanut butter to roll in rather than eat.

"Life after Bush & Gorbachev/ The wall is down but something is lost/ Turn on the news, it looks like a movie/ It makes me wanna sing..." and, boom, in kicks the most wondrous chorus to ever reverberate round garageland.

Good mucky fun, sure, but where American Caesar really comes into its own is when it flys off at a tangent. 'Mixin' In Color' uses a gentle swingbeat to take a potshot at institutionalised racism; 'Jealousy' rams its point home with nothing more vicious than an acoustic guitar; and 'It's Our Love' is every bit as gooey as the title implies, a celebration of Iggy's recent nuptials which bears an uncanny resemblance to Phyllis Nelson's 'Move Closer'. "Now we got something good together/ A life where we have joined our hands/ And there ain't nobody gonna break that", gushes Ig in a manner that ought to have Harry Connick Jr. looking to his laurels.

With 17 tracks and a total running time of 75 minutes, there are bound to be a handful of duds and, sure enough, 'Perforation Problems' and 'Social Life' fall short of the mark due to the lack of what we in the trade refer to as 'a tune'.

Not a bad strike rate, though, for someone who by rights should have been jamming with Jimi Hendrix and John Bonham, years ago.

• Stuart Clark