You never know what you’re going to find in the desert — a lone cactus, an old man claiming he’s Billy the Kid, a talking gecko, or maybe, just maybe, a secret collaboration between Iggy Pop and Josh Homme.
Wait, what? Yeah, the immortal garage rock legend and the Queens of the Stone Age/Eagles of Death Metal frontman wrote and recorded an album together. They even managed to keep it a secret, which is not easy these days. The album, Post Pop Depression, is slated for released in March with a limited tour consisting of meticulously selected venues to follow. The top secret project was recorded with the help of Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age and Dead Weather adding guitars and keyboards and Arctic Monkey’s drummer Matt Helders playing drums.
According to the New York Times, the duo recorded in brief sessions, either at Homme’s Joshua Tree studio or at his Pink Duck studio in Burbank, California. The unique marriage of rock power houses got its start when Pop shot off a short text to Homme, saying that it would be great to work together. Homme couldn’t agree more, saying that his discovery of Pop’s solo albums led him to break up his first band, Kyuss.
“I was listening to ‘Lust for Life’ and ‘The Idiot,’ and I was traveling on tour with a very successful band,” he said. “I thought, ‘That said what I wanted to say and I couldn’t say it better.’ So I quit.”
After receiving a package from FedEx that Pop referred to as a “dossier,” consisting of lyrics, stories and notes from Pop’s days in Berlin, Germany and his work with the late David Bowie and a selection of Walt Whitman quotes, the two got to work. Homme made them swear to be all in, 100% behind the project, and the work that came from it. If they weren’t, any remnants of it would be buried out in the desert.
Homme also spends some of his time playing with the Eagles of Death Metal and was slated to be at their ill-fated Paris performance in November. The sessions with Pop helped him cope with the tragedy, saying that “the fact that I had this to work on, it saved me.”
The Iggy Pop/Josh Homme project will make its debut Thursday night on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
(Via Pitchfork)
