The big news is that, on four cuts, Skull Ring marks Pop's first studio collaboration with the Stooges since Raw Power in 1973, and thankfully Ron Asheton's gloriously primal guitar riffs sound as brilliant as ever, and mix with Iggy's bestial wail like gin and tonic if 'Little Electric Chair' and 'Skull Ring' don't quite pick up where Fun House left off, they make it clear the monster that is the Stooges can still shake the Earth when they have a notion. Of course, Iggy's career had always offered plenty of opportunities for such thinking, and just as he had in the past, Iggy came back to shut down the disbelievers with a solid slice of prime rock & roll called Skull Ring. Iggy Pop delivered a solid one-two punch (for the first time in a while) with Brick by Brick and American Caesar in 19, but after ten years and three major duds in a row (the uninspired Naughty Little Doggie and the strikingly faulty Avenue B and Beat 'Em Up), you just had to wonder if maybe the World's Forgotten Boy had finally lost the magic touch for good. One of the key rules of rock & roll is there are some artists you can never count out - no matter how many lame records they may make, no matter how misguided their career direction might seem, they always hold the promise that they'll jump back in the loop and deliver the goods again.

Iggy pop skull ring