Consumer Guide Album

Mott the Hoople: All the Young Dudes [Columbia, 1972]
Those enamored of the dirty sound Guy Stevens got out of (or imposed on) this band complain that David Bowie's production is thin and antiseptic, but I always found their Atlantic albums fuzzy, and anyway, the material is powerful enough to overwhelm such quibbles. Mick Ralphs and Verden Allen make catchy. Bowie's title tune captures the spirit of a dispossessed younger (than me, Bowie, or Mott the Hoople) generation united by a style against time. The Velvet Underground cover is definitive. And Ian Hunter does more than get away with a long, slow, pretentious one at the close--"Sea Diver" is a triumph. A−