This album was recorded at roughly the same time as Low, during Iggy ‘n’ Dave’s (Pop and Bowie, that is) trip to Germany to get themselves off drugs. It’s co-written between Pop and Bowie; some argue that it’s more a Bowie album that Pop performs on, but although Bowie’s musical fingerprints are clear, so are Pop’s. (That just doesn’t sound right, I may have to break my convention and call him Iggy).
Most noticeably Bowie is the track Tiny Girls, partly because it features some Bowie saxophone that sounds much like The Man Who Sold The World, partly because its waltz-time do-wop melody sounds a lot like Drive-In Saturday.
The rest, however, is a more experimental sound. As with Bowie's Low it draws on krautrock elements to give generally repetitive underlying beats and an industrial feel. Nightclubbing (which I believe is on the Trainspotting soundtrack) is a plodding and muddy number that makes it sound more like the narrator is working on a production line in a factory – presumably that is the intent in some ways, turning the process of going clubbing into something monotonous and obligatory. Which, I daresay, both Iggy ‘n’ David must have felt to certain degree, jaded by the almost compulsory partying of the rock lifestyle that they’re trying to escape from.
There are similarities to both Velvet Underground and The Doors, Iggy’s voice coming somewhere between Lou Reed and Jim Morisson. The lengthy Dum Dum Boys is very Doors-esque, a wandering odyssey about The Stooges that brings to mind The End.
The final track Mass Production is the most industrial, and sounds a long way ahead of its time, where the sense from earlier songs of the alienation of humanity in a post-industrial world are brought to the fore. It makes the mechanisation of Pink Floyd’s Welcome To The Machine sound like a quaint cottage industry by comparison, and I love it.
The general sense of dark sludginess pervades the album, but for me in a good way – this is early Goth, a celebration of darkness. The exception is China Girl, but compared to the later Bowie version, this is also darker, less poppy and chirpy. It’s Iggy’s own song about an unrequited love for the partner of another man, and its perhaps this more personal connection to the material that makes this a more raw version of the song – I think it’s the better one.
As with Low, if you’re expecting more of the same from earlier albums you’ll be disappointed. I think from my perspective in time, both this and Low are closer to the later material from Bowie and Pop, and so it’s a less jarring experience. It also still meets a lot of my musical sensibilities, so I rather liked it.
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