Iggy Pop “The Idiot” (1977)

This is probably Iggy’s best record, thanks to Bowie’s inspired production touches and obvious assistance in the songwriting department. The weird post-glam sonic breakthroughs Bowie and cohorts were making in these days provide the perfect foil for Iggy’s nihilistic hedonism and manic-depressive urbanity, which ranges from the proto-goth, blasé-in-crowd banality of “Fun” to the “hey, where the f*ck did everybody go?” sentiments of “Dum Dum Boys,” to a final affirmation to just go out for cigarettes in “Mass Production.” The proto-industrial soundscapes give Iggy’s alienated musings the perfect setting, and the Eno-inspired spaciousness in the production gives him room to rant, rave, mumble, and croon his way through the urban wasteland without miring him down; in other words, even when it’s a semi-catatonic drag, this disc rocks with a kind of cold sweat and shivery stagger that reinvents rawk with an ever-so-slight intellectual angle: which is what we call post-punk, even though this is, chronologically speaking, in punk’s very midst. But never mind the conceptual bollocks: play this and Joy Division’s first in rapid succession and the influence becomes readily apparent. Thing is, though, this is a far better album than that one. And I’d even venture to say that this is better than Bowie’s own “Berlin” albums, at least in some respects. The melancholy and menace are more precariously balanced, and Iggy walks a fine line in his lyrics between abstraction and specificity, in vocal persona between a man driven to murder by boredom and an idiot getting stoned and running around (thus splitting the difference between the two and showing up their identity under conditions of mass production, wherein China Girl is not quite what it seems). And the cold, steely textures are at once severely remote and warmly inviting, thanks to Tony Visconti’s richly minimalist mix, which evokes neon nights, gothic fog, factory noises, radio static, and the little voice of one’s bad conscience, among other things. Not only an important and influential record, but one that remains honest-to-goodness great, and fully rewards repeated listening. –Will