Mogwai – Underground

How long before Iggy Pop gets crude on a Mogwai single? One spoken line. He wrote the words himself and opens by talking, a man built to turn a profit who wants love instead, then starts singing and piles absurd non-sequiturs onto modern life, the crudest of them landing right up front. Matt Sweeney arranged the sung part, and Iggy says the opening bars put him in mind of how lonely modern life can be. Mogwai meet him with a tornado of guitar noise, a hard rhythm and the odd glimmer of synth, with their teenage punk side in charge, the one behind “Ceiling Granny”.

It’s their first proper collaboration, a long way on from Mogwai sampling his old CBC interview on “Punk Rock:” from Come On Die Young. Scott Macpherson directed the video, and the song is on Happy Tears, a 30-year retrospective out January 8, 2027 on Rock Action Records.