Iggy Pop, The Royal Albert Hall, review: Pop is raging against the dying of the light

Flanked by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Joshua Homme and Artic Monkeys’ drummer Matt Helders, Iggy Pop is as strong and impressive as ever

Iggy and his current band members, including Josh Homme

At 69, Iggy Pop is raging against the dying of the light and tonight the Royal Albert Hall is the focus of his ire. “Turn up the lights in this f****** dump!” he hollers two songs in, by which time he is already topless, climbed into the stalls and ran, danced and gyrated across the stage at angles that seem implausible for anyone, let alone a man approaching 70.

The response to opener “Lust for Life” is unbridled mania to the point you forget you’re in the confines of the normally reverential Albert Hall. That’s the effect Pop, the ultimate proto-punk survivor, has been inspiring since he set punk rock’s template with The Stooges in 1969, but tonight the devotion seems particularly feverish, bordering on poignant.

Having outlived his dear friends and collaborators David Bowie and Lou Reed, rather improbably given his 1970s seemed to consist of little other than hard drugs and extreme acts of self-mutilation, Pop is staring mortality in the face on new album Post Pop Depression.The album is an impressive heyday-recalling set made with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Joshua Homme and Artic Monkeys’ drummer Matt Helders. However, there are none-too-subtle hints that the album is to be his swansong, tonight feels like goodbye. When Iggy milks applause, the crowd respond in kind – you could toast bread with the warmth.

Homme and Helders flank Pop tonight in a supergroup that does justice to the term. It has been many moons since Homme seemed this engaged; as he struts the length of the stage, twice sparking a cigarette to reinforce his own rebel cool, he grins like a man living out his schoolboy fantasies. He leads the charge on a set that, bar one track, is made up of the newest album and both of Pop’s classic Berlin-created, Bowie-produced, career-saving 1970s albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life. With Homme’s fingerprints apparent, old material is injected with bulk and swagger. There’s late night menace to “Sister Midnight”, “Nightclubbing” grinds seductively, while “Sixteen” is so rousing it threatens to collapse under its own virility.

New songs don’t wilt in the face of history: the breezy “Gardenia” proves a mass singalong, while “Paraguay”, which ends with a litany of barbs aimed at modern life over a Queens of the Stone Age-style chug and response, is as vital as anything that precedes it.

But for all the renowned power of the band, this is Iggy’s show. How could it not be? Even in advancing years, Pop remains a whirlwind spirit, taking flight as the music thunders behind him, limbs flailing as he stage dives and fights his way through the floor. When one overexcited young woman climbs the stage to kiss him and refuses to let go, she seems to speak for everyone.

“Here comes success,” he exclaims on celebratory closer “Success”, and it gives pause for thought: never as big as Bowie or as revered as Reed, Iggy Pop has nonetheless triumphed utterly on his own terms. Tonight is as downright brilliant a rock n roll show as it is possible to see. Whether it proves a full stop or not remains to be seen, but treasure him regardless: we’ll never see his like again.