Iggy Pop Joins Mogwai on ‘Underground,’ Previewing New Compilation

Iggy Pop sings on “Underground,” a new Mogwai song that arrives nearly three decades after the Scottish band sampled his voice for Come On Die Young. The track previews the band’s upcoming compilation, Happy Tears, due out January 8.

The collaboration closes a long circle. In the late 1990s, Mogwai built the Come On Die Young opener “Punk Rock” around audio from an interview Iggy Pop gave to the CBC in 1977. “Punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and … it’s a term that’s based on contempt,” Pop said on that recording, set against the group’s slow-building, moody post-rock.

On “Underground,” Pop opens in the same serious register. “I am a robot and I am unhappy,” he says. “I have been designed to make money, but I want to make love.” The guitars then crash in, and Pop’s humor surfaces: “I don’t need to suck a cock,” he sings. “All the friends that I have got understand these words I spit/I don’t need to sing bullshit.”

Unlike Mogwai’s early, slow-burn instrumentals, “Underground” sits on a hard beat. Pop sings “Underground, you’re my home” with the same affinity for underground music he expressed when talking about punk in 1977. Scott McPherson directed the song’s video.

“I’ve always liked Mogwai,” Pop said in a statement. “The opening of the track reminded me of the crushing modern loneliness. The sung vocal, which was arranged by Matt Sweeney, felt like it was made for someone who is pissed off and doesn’t mind saying so.”

Happy Tears surveys Mogwai’s 30-year history with highlights and rarities. The set includes a reworking of “New Paths to Helicon 1,” newly retitled “Brand New Paths to Helicon 1,” recorded with the Budapest Art Orchestra. Rock Action will issue the compilation as a double LP, a quadruple LP, a double CD, and digitally.

The expanded editions carry 13 additional tracks, six of them previously unreleased. Among them: “Angels vs Aliens,” “Die 1 Dislike!,” a live “Ether” with The KNDS Fairey Band, a Holden remix of “The Sun Smells Too Loud,” an Other Two remix of “Ritchie Sacramento,” and a live “Mogwai Fear Satan.”

The band will also release a two-and-a-half-hour audio documentary, Happy Tears: The Story of Mogwai, alongside the compilation. In it, guitarist Stuart Braithwaite reflects on the band’s longevity.

“I never thought we’d be making 11 records, because hardly any bands I liked ever did,” Braithwaite said. “We’re doing it being weirdo Scottish instrumental misery mongers. Like, yeah, that’s pretty wild.”

The standard double LP runs 13 tracks, opening with “Yes! I Am a Long Way From Home” and moving through “I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead,” “Hunted By a Freak,” “Take Me Somewhere Nice,” “Boltfor,” “CODY,” “How to Be a Werewolf,” “Auto Rock,” “Remurdered,” “Ritchie Sacramento” and “Lion Rumpus,” before closing with “Underground” featuring Iggy Pop.

With Pop on the final track, Happy Tears bookends the band’s catalog: the voice that opened Come On Die Young now closes the retrospective, and January 8 will show whether the “misery mongers” have more surprises in store.