We're in the home stretch, so I figured maybe this is a topic worth considering. Look back and find the best album art from the decade in which albums as tangible entities stopped being important. Usually discussion of album covers here is done for yuks, but let's play it straight as long as we can before we run to Angels & Airwaves or Empire of the Sun, because after that, someone is gonna post Ken: By Request Only, and then there we are again. The other inevitable wayward path is, of course, "post a picture of an album cover whether it's good or bad and then don't say anything," and let's dodge that too.
Radiohead - 2003 - Hail to the Thief. (The Gloaming.)
This is a map of part of Los Angeles, redone with significant words and messages painted in the colors of American road signs. It's a good visual representation of the old Radiohead theme of Information Overload. That it's all painted by hand instead of being rendered on a computer is another manifestation of another trope, that of cognitive dissonance between message and execution (condemning the advance of technology through sequencers, Kaoss Pads, and Ondes Martenots; bemoaning loneliness and alienation through populist sing-along anthems): here it's lending a personal touch to impersonal communication, as if to subvert gargantuan billboards and ubiquitous signage. In and of itself, it's far and away the best Radiohead album cover; I've always felt Stanley Donwood's work has been a tad overrated. As for matching its contents, it's hit or miss: the feeling of being overwhelmed with stimuli definitely comes into play on the verses of "A Wolf at the Door," the stuttering synths and drums on "Myxomatosis," the second half of "2+2=5," and the raindropsX26 part of "Sit down. Stand up." I can't say the same for the more subdued tracks like "Sail to the Moon" or "Scatterbrain," however. Good as it is, it won't be remembered as THE Radiohead album because that's obviously Kid A, but HTTT should be remembered as having the best art.
The Arcade Fire - 2004 - Funeral
What you have here is a vaguely old-timey, cutesy, affectedly quirky cover, which really suits the band and this album perfectly. That it's sepia-toned seems just right for a band from/an album about Montreal, a city that in my mind should be rendered in fond sepia tones just like old New York, with big slowly crumbling cathedrals and busting little ethnic quarters. Synaestethically, a lot of the album sounds old and brown, with big rolling tack pianos and wheezy old accordions and tinny little violins. (Tangent forthcoming. I don't know what's going to become of the old Arcade Fire. The follow-up to Funeral wasn't terribly memorable, and they're coming up on three years since its release. I know the music industry has changed, and bands are no longer subject to record label martinets who force an album out of poor kids every year till The Business chews them up and spits them out, and that's good, but any length of time over two years between albums should subject the new release to ever-increasing scrutiny with each passing day. So this took you two and a half years to make? This took three years? Four? FIVE?) Anyway, image of a decade in music, I feel.
Sufjan Stevens - 2005 - Illinois
I hate Sufjan, I hate this album, I hate its cover, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. That being said, it has to be considered among the decade's great covers whether I like it or not. The delicate cloying preciousness of the kitschy typefaces with the big tourism-billboard ILLINOISE up top with the hand-drawn artwork matches the music's delicate cloying preciousness blow for blow (and it sure does blow). Add the whole Superman controversy (he's pictured here on a scan of the first pressing, but removed later on) as a symbol of the battle between evil monolithic corporations citing copyright infringement and plucky indie labels citing aw-shucks fair use, and it encapsulates the decade's tug of war between powers. Funny thing is that while Sianis's billy goat and Al Capone are self-evident go-to symbols of the state's popular culture, the whole Superman/Metropolis IL thing was kind of a reach in the first place. The whole conflict could've been obviated by instead using a state icon like Abe Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, or Rick Nielsen, but then I wouldn't be mulling over its significance. God, this is such a shitty album.
M83 - 2008 - Saturdays = Youth
You can tell I'm burning out on doing the first few write-ups of this thread here, I know. Look: it's an album that lovingly recreates '80s music, and as such it's a picture of a bunch of extras from John Hughes films, or doppelgangers of their prominent characters. Too much of a pastiche in andof itself to lend itself to parody as other more original Great Covers always do, but that's only one criterion. I just think it looks really cool. It's a nice autumnal scene, and I dig the way the people are blocked in the photograph, spread out here and there instead of all together. I have to say I'm also impressed with cover and music alike from M83's other album Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts, which is such a big thick wall of cold unforgiving sound that sometimes I too want to lie in the snow flat on my back.
Guns n Roses - 2008 - Chinese Democracy
As many people probably feel about the album itself, I like this more for what it ought to have been more than what it is. Inc made this point at the old board, more or less, and so I'm just going to paraphrase it here: if the cover is simply the photograph of a bicycle with a basket on the back up against a wall with "Guns n' Roses" crudely spray-painted on it, you have the essence of the "Chinese Democracy" message represented in a picture. However, at this stage of the game, Axl can't settle for saying a thousand words when he could say 1,006, and so the picture is unnecessarily shunted off to the corner so that they can fit the band name (it's already in the photo) and the album title (like anyone doesn't know by now) in some mawkishly filtered textured lettering that belongs on a rap album, with some stupid GnR logo in the bottom right corner just for good measure. The name of the band effectively appears three times. Take away the bullshit and you have a pretty striking image, but again, "take away the bullshit" might as well be Sanskrit to this guy.
So what are your contributions?
Radiohead - 2003 - Hail to the Thief. (The Gloaming.)
This is a map of part of Los Angeles, redone with significant words and messages painted in the colors of American road signs. It's a good visual representation of the old Radiohead theme of Information Overload. That it's all painted by hand instead of being rendered on a computer is another manifestation of another trope, that of cognitive dissonance between message and execution (condemning the advance of technology through sequencers, Kaoss Pads, and Ondes Martenots; bemoaning loneliness and alienation through populist sing-along anthems): here it's lending a personal touch to impersonal communication, as if to subvert gargantuan billboards and ubiquitous signage. In and of itself, it's far and away the best Radiohead album cover; I've always felt Stanley Donwood's work has been a tad overrated. As for matching its contents, it's hit or miss: the feeling of being overwhelmed with stimuli definitely comes into play on the verses of "A Wolf at the Door," the stuttering synths and drums on "Myxomatosis," the second half of "2+2=5," and the raindropsX26 part of "Sit down. Stand up." I can't say the same for the more subdued tracks like "Sail to the Moon" or "Scatterbrain," however. Good as it is, it won't be remembered as THE Radiohead album because that's obviously Kid A, but HTTT should be remembered as having the best art.
The Arcade Fire - 2004 - Funeral
What you have here is a vaguely old-timey, cutesy, affectedly quirky cover, which really suits the band and this album perfectly. That it's sepia-toned seems just right for a band from/an album about Montreal, a city that in my mind should be rendered in fond sepia tones just like old New York, with big slowly crumbling cathedrals and busting little ethnic quarters. Synaestethically, a lot of the album sounds old and brown, with big rolling tack pianos and wheezy old accordions and tinny little violins. (Tangent forthcoming. I don't know what's going to become of the old Arcade Fire. The follow-up to Funeral wasn't terribly memorable, and they're coming up on three years since its release. I know the music industry has changed, and bands are no longer subject to record label martinets who force an album out of poor kids every year till The Business chews them up and spits them out, and that's good, but any length of time over two years between albums should subject the new release to ever-increasing scrutiny with each passing day. So this took you two and a half years to make? This took three years? Four? FIVE?) Anyway, image of a decade in music, I feel.
Sufjan Stevens - 2005 - Illinois
I hate Sufjan, I hate this album, I hate its cover, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. That being said, it has to be considered among the decade's great covers whether I like it or not. The delicate cloying preciousness of the kitschy typefaces with the big tourism-billboard ILLINOISE up top with the hand-drawn artwork matches the music's delicate cloying preciousness blow for blow (and it sure does blow). Add the whole Superman controversy (he's pictured here on a scan of the first pressing, but removed later on) as a symbol of the battle between evil monolithic corporations citing copyright infringement and plucky indie labels citing aw-shucks fair use, and it encapsulates the decade's tug of war between powers. Funny thing is that while Sianis's billy goat and Al Capone are self-evident go-to symbols of the state's popular culture, the whole Superman/Metropolis IL thing was kind of a reach in the first place. The whole conflict could've been obviated by instead using a state icon like Abe Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, or Rick Nielsen, but then I wouldn't be mulling over its significance. God, this is such a shitty album.
M83 - 2008 - Saturdays = Youth
You can tell I'm burning out on doing the first few write-ups of this thread here, I know. Look: it's an album that lovingly recreates '80s music, and as such it's a picture of a bunch of extras from John Hughes films, or doppelgangers of their prominent characters. Too much of a pastiche in andof itself to lend itself to parody as other more original Great Covers always do, but that's only one criterion. I just think it looks really cool. It's a nice autumnal scene, and I dig the way the people are blocked in the photograph, spread out here and there instead of all together. I have to say I'm also impressed with cover and music alike from M83's other album Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts, which is such a big thick wall of cold unforgiving sound that sometimes I too want to lie in the snow flat on my back.
Guns n Roses - 2008 - Chinese Democracy
As many people probably feel about the album itself, I like this more for what it ought to have been more than what it is. Inc made this point at the old board, more or less, and so I'm just going to paraphrase it here: if the cover is simply the photograph of a bicycle with a basket on the back up against a wall with "Guns n' Roses" crudely spray-painted on it, you have the essence of the "Chinese Democracy" message represented in a picture. However, at this stage of the game, Axl can't settle for saying a thousand words when he could say 1,006, and so the picture is unnecessarily shunted off to the corner so that they can fit the band name (it's already in the photo) and the album title (like anyone doesn't know by now) in some mawkishly filtered textured lettering that belongs on a rap album, with some stupid GnR logo in the bottom right corner just for good measure. The name of the band effectively appears three times. Take away the bullshit and you have a pretty striking image, but again, "take away the bullshit" might as well be Sanskrit to this guy.
So what are your contributions?
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