Cover Art Highs and Lows: Best and Worst of 2009

To kick off this year-end extravaganza, I thought the best place to start is at the cover. Album art has a wonderfully complex history, being the subject of much idolizing and ignoring, celebrating and debating, commericialization and controversy. Some images are employed to compliment the themes or mood of the record’s music, others rejoice in the superficial and clichéd. But who’s to say which are which? And who ever said you can’t judge a CD by its cover? Every album cover, visually appealing or brutally average, has its own wormhole for discourse... but since I'm alone here, the only discourse will be my opinions shouted into canyons. Probably for the best.

In a fleeting attempt to be fair-minded, SCQ will only discuss a shortlist of albums listened to and reviewed here over the past year. Five high-points and low-points in no sensible order. And to ensure this feature doesn’t turn out like some dry, amateurish Art History 101 tutorial, I’ve decided to write this feature half in the bag. Yeah, that’s right, just go with it and enjoy!

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective

HIGH

Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective
Domino Records.

Finally, a magic-eye poster I get! As if Animal Collective weren’t already tied so tightly to drug-use, the cover of Merriweather Post Pavilion gives parents one more reason to take the unassuming statement “My favourite band is Animal Collective” to mean “My friends and I spend weekends in the forest on acid, and I don’t bring a jacket”. With strangely patterned leaves merging to form a rolling, hallucinatory quilt of awesomeness, Merriweather…’s artwork could be making the apt statement that this record doesn’t require psychotropic drugs to make you feel giddy, braindead and force you to nearly wet yourself. At the very least, it’s an iconic image destined for retro t-shirts thirty years from now, when Merriweather Post Pavilion is a cult classic and everyone wonders why major radio never played it.

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Phoenix

LOW

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix
V2 Records.

Seriously. Are these construction-paper stencils of the Hindenburg before the disaster, when it was cute and one-dimensional? Or are they falling bombs, one of which unlucky enough to bear the worst album title of the year outside of Raditude? It’s one thing to cap off a discography of thoughtless covers with one that borders on insulting, but another thing entirely to rip off the grade school lack of creativity that only Morr Music clings to like it’s really working in their favour. Next time, guys, just pull the same routine you did with It’s Never Been Like That; stand around as if you’re waiting for someone, and try to look cool in spite of the dude standing on his head. Another flawless choice.

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Years of Refusal - Morrissey

HIGH

Years of Refusal
Morrissey
Polydor Records.

Morrissey spends a lot of time looking in the mirror, that much I’m sure of. I mean, the guy knows he’s going to look bad-ass holding a tommy-gun for You Are the Quarry and devastatingly handsome holding a violin on Ringleaders of the Tormentors, so why not a baby? Asexual or not, the sight of Morrissey holding a child with that “Just 'cause I'm cribbin' this kid doesn't mean I care if it lives or dies...” face is just perfect and plays by default into the icon’s consistent themes of aging, loneliness and death. The inner, Morrissey-less booklet isn’t as poignant, featuring all the band members in what too closely resembles an American Apparel tight t-shirt contest but still: Morrissey + gem-covered baby = how has it taken this long?

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Begone Dull Care - Junior Boys

LOW

Begone Dull Care
Junior Boys
Domino Records.

Begone Dull Care? No worries… I think you've fought it off. After all, your cover is a lifeless black cue card, split between languages. There was clearly no care involved. Really, I wish I had been in the room when Domino reps and the Junior Boys unanimously stood up and applauded this as the perfect first impression for their product, as if it translates anything beyond indecision and a deep, undiagnosed contempt for environmental issues. How many trees came down for the sake of this silent movie title-card? Truthfully, I only type these words because I adore the Junior Boys and don’t want this album to be misconstrued as a wedding place-card mistakenly mounted inside a jewel case.

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Concentration - Dog Day

HIGH

Concentration
Dog Day
Outside Records.

Like the music herein, I didn’t know what to make of Concentration’s geometric cover art, designed in black and white shapes but coloured curiously with pastel variety, upon first encounter. What looks like a mask is only the first of many in this fold-open series of acid-washed faces, which, one on top of another, grows to resemble a totem pole. Besides the cool pie-sliced ouija board of band-members and lyrics, the ensemble is capped off beautifully by the image beneath the disc itself: a hooded lizard! That’s right… beneath those masks is an all-knowing, cold-blooded reptile. Once you’ve fully taken in the record, it adds up – what sounds like typical indie-rock on first listen gradually unveils itself to be a murky, goth-tinged pop record.

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Magnolia - The Wooden Birds

LOW

Magnolia
The Wooden Birds
Morr Records.

Um, right... Remember my earlier comments about how Phoenix’s less-is-more aesthetic resembled Morr Music / grade-one art class? Well, this one actually is Morr Music, and no shit. So there’s a dude floating above Yoshi Island clouds and partly trapped inside an amoeba. Next to him is another silhouette that’s disappearing. Oh sorry, was there something to misinterpret here or is this just the latest example of twee-to-the-point-of-banality Morr indie-cool? Don’t get me wrong, Morr has done some cool covers (including the last album by Andrew Kenny’s previous band American Analog Set) but where Set Free’s cover was emblematic of the record’s themes and studio-notes, Magnolia’s vacuous feel only suits its neither here-nor-there, rag-tag music. About as twee as purgatory gets.

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear

HIGH

Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear
Warp Records.

It isn’t often you see cubism beyond the confines of Picasso prints, let alone on pop-art formats like album covers. Pretty cool. It almost makes me want to return to Studio Art class where comments like “the shades of pink give the piece a warmth that really centers its mood” and “triangles make me edgy!” were considered critical feedback. In other words, if I was a freshman back in university, I’d choose the Veckatimest artwork over, you know, the Salvador Dali option...

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Harmony Handgrenade - Oxygen Ponies

LOW

Harmony Handgrenade
Oxygen Ponies
Hidden Target Records.

When life gives you an album-cover premise that seems impossible – like, say, figuring out how to draw the physical embodiment of ‘harmony’ – turn it into lemons. And a complete eyesore.

Cover Art Highs and Lows: II - Lindstrom & Prins Thomas

HIGH

II
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas
Eskimo Recordings.

Most people typically identify awesome cover-art when they want to buy an album without even hearing it. Isn’t that something, buying something that’s worth will ultimately be determined by listening to it on the basis of visual aesthetic? Yet it happens all the time, and it happened to me with the long-awaited sequel by Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. If I had to guess what was happening here, I’d hypothesize that all these stringy animals (giraffes, parrots, female-faced butterfly) are converging into one unnamable, undying beast that kinda represents all of animality. Yeah, the art’s cool… but what pushes it into SCQ’s Top 5 is how the music shifts and amalgamates accordingly, collecting from eight separate weeds to spawn one giant, uncontrollable garden of utter nonsense. Top score!

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Outer South - Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band

LOW

Outer South
Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band
Merge Records.

Band photo-shoots are commonly embarrassing in that staged, we-wish-we-were-elsewhere look that's usually visible. It’s a hell of a lot worse when the band-members look incredibly uncomfortable / pissed-off to be in each-other's company. Dude on the left looks relatively at ease, probably because he scored the best chair, but that couch is cracklin’ with leg-crossed uncertainty, particularly the plaid-shirted fellow giving Conor a wary look that is either asking “I'm in the band, right?” or “pink sweatshirt… really…?”. This group looks more likely to have been pulled in from the street as individual pedestrians asked to review advertisements, or even out-of-touch high-school friends forced together at a funeral reception, than a close-knit band. And Conor’s going to pretty extreme lengths to pretend he’s not there. Then you hear Outer South and it all makes sense.