The Stooges

Buffing the rock on which punk was built

The Stooges – 4 stars
Fun House – 5 stars

Though it’s been over 35 years since these sides were first waxed, the sound of Ron Asheton’s dangerous guitar and Iggy Pop’s disaffected holler is still bracing as an ice-water bath after a lost weekend. As the laudatory notes by Alice Cooper and Jack White in these fine reissues attest, The Stooges built the bridge from starry-eyed psychedelic music to petulant punk, creating a sound that’s perennially fresh. While they were clearly still establishing a zeitgeist on their debut (with the heavy-handed “We Will Fall” betraying lingering hippie pretensions), Fun House is pure revelation, made all the better by excellent remastering. Detailed liner notes and an extra disc of bonus tracks for both titles provide a digestible glimpse into the development of these essential recordings (previously overkilled on Rhino’s Complete Fun House Sessions box set).