When times are hard, I’ve heard it said, do what’s easy. This is what’s happening in the blog this week. I’d apply this to watching TV, reading & listening to music. That said, I’m applying it to blogging too.
My Mac tells me I last blogged about album covers in October 2020! I was shocked, as I always am to see how long ago things have been written arty blog-wise. It’s been an odd constant through some sad & strange times & you don’t feel you can knock it out of the park every week. Whereas I set great store by the power of longevity of a positive habit or routine, quality is better.
In any case, for me at least, the music I like is easy & the art or album covers associated with records we love become imprinted on us as they literally are on them. You automatically think of the cover art when you think of or hear the music without realising. Conversely, you can hear the music when you spy the design somewhere unexpected. It’s the power of the visual, such as when you see a logo you recognise. You don’t need to be told with words what the product or company is; the logo does the work for you. Even if they change the colour of packaging on a packet of crisps, I’m confused.
As I said before, what great record cover art does is connects you with the band or artist. It sums them up & represents them forever. If it’s really doing its job well, the album will look like they sound. & so it is with these albums. I’m only choosing ones from my own record collection. After all, for me there’s nothing more difficult than having to listen to music I don’t like. This week, I’m doing what’s easy.
Siouxsie & the Banshees, Hyaena (1984)
The danger of having an iconic record cover of course is that people stop noticing it & this has, I’d argue, happened with other Banshees sleeves. It’s just stuck there as a shorthand to the music inside. Not so with Hyaena. Despite their roots & place in punk rock history, the Banshees were arty. Pretension & experiment were not dirty words, in fact they might be encouraged. This band sought to rise above the rabble & to raise you up with them, provided you made the effort. They weren’t going to HELP you for god’s sake – you had to get off your backside & do it for yourself. You had to THINK for yourself. Seen by some as gloomy, serious or worse, snooty the Banshees had responsibilities to the work & weren’t prepared to accept sloppiness in what undoubtedly was ART to them & their loyal followers. So no-one should have been surprised by the use of Cubist imagery by Maria Penn on the cover any more than by the care taken over the sound, echo, sensuality & sparkle of Hyaena. Excitingly, the front cover was EMBOSSED, only adding to the sensory nature of the record as a whole. The colours too were new & vibrant. Rich & bold, as an album sleeve it worked much better than Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s later timid attempts at Cubism-on-record-covers. I will say though that the Banshee’s further efforts to plunder art history went too far with A Kiss In the Dreamhouse, where they purloined the work of Klimt with very limited success…
Kula Shaker, K (1996)
I like a musical crossover & Kula Shaker are the masters of combining styles. The album cover of K – their first album – by artist Dave Gibbons (b. 1949) was an attempt to stuff in as many ideas as possible. This is often the way with Kula Shaker’s music too: every influence is welcome & they’re all given an occasion to shine through. Whether the inspirations were musical or are stories of Lord Krishna, knights or King Arthur, nothing was left to chance. Even the colour scheme is significant. K is luminous, it’s about the light, the numbers matter, the order matters; it glorifies the auspicious, the optimistic, the uplifting. So rather than not fit in everywhere, it could be said given the opportunity they’d fit in everywhere. We were being invited through the door into their world with K & its cover. Only the most closed-minded wouldn’t be tempted to have a peek.
Iggy Pop, American Caesar (1993)
It was partly the time. Iggy is proclaiming himself the king of ALL THIS. & he was right. So-called grunge had been & all but gone & with the Stooges, Iggy had influenced everything remotely garage-sounding thereafter. This cover (art direction by Len Peltier) gives little or no room for alternative interpretation as Iggy asserts himself. Here stands the Godfather of Punk, enduring attitude intact: defiant, ripped & awkward in washed-out tones with graffiti announcing his new record’s arrival. The parental warning sticker “This is an IGGY POP record,” added the self-deprecating humour & righteous disrespect for authority we’d come to expect from the tiny but mighty icon. All hail Iggy Pop & “exterminate the brutes” while you’re at it.
Brett Anderson, Black Rainbows (2011)
I don’t take well to criticism of people I like. I remember when Black Rainbows came out one reviewer decried it for being miserable. I also remember, disgusted at yet another poor excuse for journalism, saying aloud, “But it’s called BLACK RAINBOWS. What the hell do you EXPECT?” Brett was indeed throwing an enormous clue our way. In any case, misery is in the eye of the beholder & I’m in close & affectionate contact with my inner (?) miseryguts. & the cover by Paul Khera & Brett gave you nothing but more clues. The photograph with the flowers in the foreground strongly references Peter Saville’s work on New Order’s Power, Corruption & Lies, designed thrillingly from an 1890 painting A Basket of Roses by Henri Fantin-Latour. Saville had worked alongside Nick Knight with Brett on Suede’s Coming Up album & single covers. You could almost be forgiven for missing the singer himself on the Black Rainbows cover. To say he stands between the blooms & the black is a metaphor all of its own. What you have on this record in my opinion is a selection of sensitive, yet uplifting songs beautifully performed with his characteristic feistiness. Besides, one of the co-writers/the drummer on Black Rainbows went to my school & his brother was in my year & I knew his late father quite well & illustrated one of his books of poetry, thank you very much.
A nice little article about some Peter Saville work on iconic record sleeves, including Power, Corruption & Lies that also highlights the inimitability of Tony Wilson:
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