Fractionally over three minutes long, “Sound and Vision” is at least the perfect length for a single, and it’s also the song that most plays off a pop sensibility. The resemblances with a conventional pop hit of the time stop there, though. For a start, the intro is actually longer than the body of the song. It’s almost like an instrumental with a lyric fragment tacked on at the end as an afterthought. “Sound and Vision” was the first song Bowie wrote at the Château specifically with Eno in mind, and this holding back of the vocals was Eno’s idea, in order to create tension. It also returns us to lyric restraint after the garrulousness (by Low’s standards) of “What in the World.” On top of the Harmonized drums you can hear a hissing noise (actually a heavily gated snare), sitting strangely with a jaunty, jangly rhythm guitar riff and some synth melody lines that veer towards the cheesy. The “doo-doo” backing vocals, by Eno and Visconti’s then wife Mary Hopkin (of “Those Were the Days”
