By Scott McLennan

Bottom line: Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 captures the manic, mercurial energy that transformed the man born James Osterberg into the legend that is Iggy Pop.

Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023, Iggy Pop. Via earMUSIC — formats Include Blu-Ray+Cd Digipak, 2LP Gatefold + Digital Download

Iggy Pop’s new Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 opens with the caustic lament “Five Foot One,” but don’t for a minute believe it when our man Iggy is howling “I won’t grow anymore.”

Iggy Pop has been in a state of perpetual growth since his days fronting The Stooges in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Oh sure, he’s always played the short, shirtless, gnarly, philosophical street rat, a persona that runs through his vocals whether he is barking like a wild dog or crooning like a worldly sophisticate. But Pop’s music and artistic vision remain dynamic and ever-changing.

Pop performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival following the release of the album Every Loser, which flashed as much edge and sneer as one could hope for from Pop at this stage of the game.

Pop was 76 at the time of this recording, but he races through a career-spanning repertoire at a clip that leaves his formidable seven-piece band, made up of far younger players, sounding as if they are both in pursuit and in the pocket.

Pop’s backup of two horns, two guitars, keys, and a swinging, airtight rhythm section was probably seen among the Montreux Jazz fest crowd as a heavy-handed ensemble for a rocker. But Pop’s reputation as a punk rabble-rouser belies just how savvy he is as a band leader. Songs were reanimated — not simply replicated — as Pop bopped from old Stooges raves, such as “T.V. Eye” and “Search and Destroy,” to such late-’70s solo gems as the strum-along “Passenger” and woozy “Nightclubbing” and tunes from Every Loser.

“Raw Power,” for example, follows the blueprint of the original recording — shattering-glass piano tone, buzzsaw guitar — but amps up the tension and release thanks to the Montreux band’s twin-guitar assault and some explosive brass work from the two-man horn section.

Pop veers from his usual stops even when he meanders down memory lane during much of Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023. The mid-portion of the concert is particularly interesting. Pop first unfurls “The Endless Sea,” a brooding slow burn from 1979’s New Values album. But before you are made to feel too badly for Pop, who bemoans having to be in the service of the bourgeoisie, he shakes off those blues by launching into The Stooges’ profane and lacerating “Death Trip,” which uncannily draws connections between punk and jazz, both genres tapping into different facets of musical freedom and confrontation. Pop sticks around that era of Stooges material and picks a Raw Power outtake, “I’m Sick of You,” approached here with a lighter psychedelic touch.

Iggy Pop, Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023. Photo: earMUSIC, Marc Ducet

When Pop dives into the big numbers, there is nothing corny or reverent about his attitude. “Lust for Life,” in particular, gets really weird when Pop invites a child up on stage to sing along. Many veteran rockers are prone to folding hits into nostalgia-stoking medleys, but Pop takes two of the Stooges’ best known anthems — “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “Search and Destroy” — and stretches them out to showcase just how dynamic and revolutionary those songs were for their time — and how relevant they remain today.

Similarly, Pop brings together “Mass Production” and “Nightclubbing” from his 1977 solo artist debut, The Idiot, a dramatic musical shift at the time, the rocker forgoing the garage cacophony of the Stooges in favor of a sleeker New Wave sound. This material too has aged well, especially when run through Pop’s spirited Montreux band.

Every Loser songs “Modern Day Ripoff” and “Frenzy” fit nicely into the mix. They are model examples of Pop’s ongoing agitation, at this point an aging combativeness that is honest enough to take note of the singer’s own flagging constitution.

Bottom line: Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 captures the manic, mercurial energy that transformed the man born James Osterberg into the legend that is Iggy Pop.

Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to The Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to The Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.