On possible finale, punk icon Iggy Pop looks back darkly

Iggy Pop, struggling to kick a heavy drug habit in the late 1970s, celebrated his own intensity with the song that was arguably his masterpiece, "Lust for Life." 

On what he hints will be his final album, the now 68-year-old punk icon has offered a bleak mirror vision as he sizes up the riches of the modern world and shrugs it off.
 
"When your love of life is an empty beach, don't cry," he sings on one track of "Post Pop Depression," which comes out on March 18.
 
"Post Pop Depression" -- its title an intriguing double entendre by Pop, who was born in Michigan as James Osterberg -- marks the latest bid by a music legend to create a definitive album as a final statement.
 
British legend David Bowie -- Pop's friend and mentor who worked with him on "Lust for Life" and the American rocker's solo debut "The Idiot" -- in January came out with an intricate reflection on his own mortality, "Blackstar," two days before his death from an undisclosed battle with cancer.
 
Pop -- despite his craggy appearance and years of hard living, which famously included concerts in which he would roll about in broken glass -- is not known to be ill and has scheduled a tour of mid-sized theaters around North America and Europe.
 
But "Post Pop Depression," Pop's 22rd album if you include work with his early band The Stooges, unmistakably looks large at the rocker's legacy.
 
Pop sings longingly for a voluptuous former lover on "Gardenia" and reminisces of his artistically rejuvenating years in Berlin with Bowie on "German Days."  

The final track, "Paraguay," takes the South American country as a metaphor for a fresh escape -- away from First World lifestyle of incessant online jabbering and suffocating social...