He's been dirt, but--even at a ripe old 54--he don't care: so continues the career of punk grandfather Iggy Pop. Beat 'Em Up is a testament to the iron constitution of the truly dedicated hedonist--a caustic grind that spits blood and broken teeth on the idea of growing old gracefully, and sneers at the idea of using three chords when one chord sounds just dirty-fine. The opening "Mask" is a savage attack on "irony in place of balls", a furious Iggy taking pops at "fratboys in their shorts... sensitive smart-alec college graduates... critics fronting frantically in New York City..." and pretty much everyone else under the sun. But while it leads into one of the ex-Stooges' most frantic albums in living memory, all is not well on the quality-control front: representatively grimy blues-squall of "It's All Shit" and the rather self-explanatory "Ugliness" lack the vicious spark of good humour that's the very essence of gold-period Iggy, while the closing monologue of "VIP" ("When I wanna change a lightbulb / I don't do it myself/ I get a technician to do it") just smacks of inarticulately expressed anger . You can't help but think Iggy's heart is in the right place, raging against the shallow nature of celebrity culture; trouble is, Beat 'Em Up sounds like the work of a man that's too bitter for words. --Louis Pattison