There’s so much mystery about this cover that perhaps it’s better to start with what we do know. The image was taken by London-based Jake Walters, a commercial photographer with an impressive portfolio across fashion, celebrity and editorial portraiture.

The adorable baby, with its cheeky little expression so at odds with Morrissey’s stern gaze, is the son of Charlie Brown, Morrissey’s assistant tour manager.

Design practice No Allegiances is responsible for the design and packaging. Having noticed the subtle Mexican sounds in the music, they took their cue from Mexican folk art and vintage California. The typography was inspired by the work of legendary illustrator and printmaker José Guadalupe Posada.

The packaging also features a still life, Bodegon Con Jarra de Vino (1914), by A. Fuentes.

Noting the chiaroscuro of both the cover photography and painting, No Allegiances ran the LP and special CD version on fabric-textured stock to “makes the record feel like an oil painting hanging in the Louvre that you shouldn’t have just touched.”

But what does it all mean? The arresting image on the cover of Morrissey’s ninth studio album caused an instant deluge of speculation when it was first surfaced late last year.

Widely reported as celibate, the image of an awkwardly paternal Morrissey seemed unlikely. It also followed two other popular covers where the indie icon held a gun and a violin.

The consensus opinion seemed to be that the title referred to his years of refusing sex and that the baby on the cover symbolically represented an absence born of this choice.

Complicating matters further are the symbols – one of which appears on the baby’s forehead and the other on his arm. When the image first appeared online the file size was too small to fully make these out. Was that a W on the baby’s forehead? Did it represent the outgoing president of the Unites States?

Um, no – the baby has a butterfly on his forehead, while Morrissey’s arm seems to feature a caterpillar. For me, this awkward symbolism is the cover’s one misstep and adds little to what appears to be an instantly iconic image.

If it’s meaning is opaque, it’s no accident. This is after all this is Morrissey – a cultural figure that has always defied easy categorisation. An artist that has referred to himself as being “a fourth sex”; that famously campaign for animal rights and vegetarianism. A man who has flirted with the nationalistic far right and in the nineties developed what Encyclopedia Brittanica described as “a growing homoerotic obsession with criminals, skinheads, and boxers”.

Anticipating speculation about his latest cover, he had already drafted a response on the sleeve notes to The Years of Refusal:

“If you ask why the new album has the title it has (‘Years of Refusal’) and why on the cover he is holding the baby, after holding on previous covers the violin and the gun, because after all people will want to know, or more rumours will spill into the world and its voracious, agitated internet shadow, the sigh will almost crack into real annoyance. If you sail close to the gale force wind and bring up the sticky situations he finds himself in when he talks of his mythical old England, its disappearance and/or cultural and commercial conversion, and heretically flirts with the flag, and faces expulsion from the entertainment scene, then the sigh and the awkwardness will know no bounds.”

The lead singer of The Strokes will release his debut album sometime shortly, however the cover art has already emerged. It pays tribute to the iconic dog and gramophone image, best known today as the logo for various music companies, including Casablancas’ label RCA.

I’d always just assumed that the image had originated as a logo, perhaps because the owner of the company loved dogs or some such. However, the dog in question actually existed. His name was Nipper.

Nipper earned his name because he always tried to bite visitors on the leg, which makes him sound like exactly the kind of horrid little pencil-sharperner I hate encountering in other’s homes. But there must have been something really special about this dog because after the death of his owner Mark Henry Barraud in 1887 his brothers Philip and Francis continued to care for him.

Francis was an artist and not only did he inherit the little dog, he also took ownership of a cylinder phonograph and recordings of his late brother’s voice. When he played the recordings, he was taken by the way Nipper would look around and wonder where his old owner’s voice was coming from.

It inspired the painting “His Late Master’s Voice”.

It would later be changed to “His Master’s Voice” so that consumers weren’t made to feel too maudlin upon viewing it.

The painting became a logo and icon largely because Barraud himself recognised its commercial potential. He originally pitched it to the Edison Bell company but they thought it was a ridiculous notion that a dog would listen to a phonograph. However the Gramaphone Company ultimately purchased it for 100 pounds sterling after some modification.

Soon their US Partner Victor Records were using a simplified drawing as their logo and reminding consumers to “Look for the dog”.

By that time Nipper had past away, having been buried in 1895 in a beautiful park surrounded by Magnolia trees. And when the park was eventually built upon, a plaque was placed on the resulting building to commemorate Nipper’s resting place.

This pales in comparison to his ongoing status as the mascot for the HMV Group, the most impressive evidence of which is the four-ton Nipper that sits on a building in Albany, New York.

And the Nipper stained glass window.

Not only has this diminutive dog garnered enough large-scale public tributes to satisfy a third world despot, he’s inspired generations of impersonators and posthumously fathered a puppy called Chipper.

And now on the cover of Phrazes for the Young he sits intently at the feet of Casablancas, who seems blissfully unaware that he’s the second most famous guy in the photo.

From the hard to make out lyrics (“They called the clip a two-headed cow / Your hate clipped and distant, your luck, pilgrimage,”) through to the murky, unattractive cover art – nothing is made too easy on R.E.M.’s debut album.

R.E.M. were clearly not interested in perfection but rather the interesting tensions that came from ambiguity, originality and raw energy. The producer was to be Stephen Hague but the band successfully fought to have him fired after they found his obsession with technical perfection stifling.

When Murmur was released, it was praised by critics as an instant classic and reinforced Athens as one of the most exciting music scenes in the country. Only the fifth largest city in Georgia, Athens was a student town experiencing a creative explosion. As Josh Jackson writes in Paste Magazine, while “Athens wasn’t a one-horse town, neither was it Greenwich Village or San Francisco…But there’s something about a college town nestled in some small corner of rural America that ignites creativity in kids who grow up in towns like Macon, Ga., or Collinsville, Ill., and discover that there actually are others out there who share their passion for music, film or art.”

“Other college towns… would eventually get their moment. But in 1983, the spotlight was on Athens, thanks to R.E.M.’s full-length debut, Murmur.” Bands to have come out of Athens include the B-52’s, Indigo Girls, The Whigs and Drive-By Truckers.

Murmer’s cover art is a grainy tribute to the Southern landscape – one that is slowly being swallowed by kudzu, the agricultural nuisance you see on the cover. Imported from Japan, kudzu was originally considered exotic until it took on the qualities of an indestructible weed.

On the back cover of the record, we see a sepia-toned photo of a disused trestle, which was once part of the Georgia Railroad line into downtown Athens.

Before long, it was referred to as the “Murmur Trestle” by proud locals and, much like other landmark covers we discussed recently, became a point of pilgrimage for loyal fans.

In 2000 moves were made demolish it. But after a public outcry, which stressed not only the trestle’s importance in pop culture but also heritage value, the Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commission voted to save the trestle in October 2000.

If R.E.M.’s portrait of its hometown is far from flattering, depicting a milieu riddled with overgrowth and crumbling infrastructure, it also originated the band’s policy of avoiding their own portraits on sleeves. As Pitchfork notes, the “group pointedly didn’t appear on its album covers or inner sleeves; instead, R.E.M. remained confident that a kudzu-covered ravine or a folk-art painting could speak more strongly about their music than their own presence ever could.”

Murmur was considered a commercial disappointment upon release and to date has only been certified gold (500,000 units). At the same time, it was named by Rolling Stone as the Best Album of 1983, pulling ahead of competition that included Thriller and U2’s War.

In 1996 R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. for a reported $80 million in one of the biggest recording deals ever. In 2007 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Starting out small and exotic worked for the band, whose eventual dominance proved as irresistible as the kudzu claiming their homeland.

It’s always good to see the designers behind classic album covers getting critical and commercial recognition. And few designers could boast of a career as celebrated and prolific as Storm Thorgerson.

Taken By Storm: The Album Art of Storm Thorgerson was published by Vision On in 2007. It’s a selection of some of his best work from the past 30 years. The book also spawned a traveling exhibition of the same name.

Sleeve lovers in Brisbane can still catch Taken by Storm, which is showing at Artisan Gallery until August 1.

The same show toured to Sydney at the Global Gallery last December. For more information about this legend of cover art, there’s a nice article in the Courier Mail and an interesting interview that featured in in Time Out Sydney from late last year.

A more ‘art’ than ‘design’ album cover is Death Cab For Cutie’s 2003 release ‘Transatlanticism’. It’s by artist Adde Russell, who created everything for this cover from a dusty, spider-infested basement in Seattle. Apparently she was a tad embarrassed when the band came round to check out her work in progress.

I remember being struck by the imagery of this cover as soon as I saw it – the music being so good was a bonus.

I asked Adde a few questions about the cover:

How much direction did you have from the band / record company when coming up with the concept and design?

At the beginning there was not much direction given. I believe all Nick Harmer mentioned was that he’d like the cover to be “iconic”. Later they were more specific and direct, but from the get-go they were always open to anything – allowing me to take liberties. They all were very encouraging and made me feel as if it were a group effort.

How many concepts did you come up with for the band to choose between?

I don’t remember. A lot. Some concepts were barely realized – consisting of markers, spray-paint and a pencil sketch. The band has a wonderful ability to see very little of an idea and get it, so most of the time the feedback was instant and suggestions were made right there. If an idea was worth holding on to there was no delay in moving forward.

Did you deal directly with the band?

Yes. At the time I worked in the basement of my house in Seattle. It was really gross. Dust, spiders and leaky pipes. I remember being really embarrassed.

How did you come up with the idea for the bird & string idea? Was it inspired by the music itself?

The bird and string concept came from going to a craft store and picking up whatever I thought might work for anything. The first bird I believe was this sorry little white styrofoam bird with red string wrapped around it. Really messy and not well thought out. When I showed the various concepts to the band, that bird idea was an afterthought in the mix. I was more excited about just the red string and really didn’t think too much ahead of that. If I remember correctly, it was Nick who was really into the bird and string thing and said to keep working. Once I was able to hear the music the idea became more solidified.

Have you designed any other record covers?

Death Cab for Cutie – Plans

Death Cab for Cutie – Directions

The Long Winters: Ultimatum

The Long Winters – Putting the Days to Bed

Fine Lines – Substratosphere

Cydney Robinson – Spokesman for The Shoeless

Rocky Votolato – Brag & Cuss

Jared Bartman – I Refute Technology

Cub Country – Stretch Your Skull Cover & Smile

What were the results of having your work on millions of cds and records?

Transatlanticism was one of the first design projects I’d ever worked on. The fact that Death Cab entrusted me with the artwork and design from start to finish still amazes me. I knew that the music was very good and that they should be very proud of their work, but I had no idea I’d get a VHS tape from my mother that consisted of clips of the O.C. where the artwork was on a kids wall or when Death Cab was mentioned. It’s a goofy feeling seeing something you’re associated with on television.

The opportunity has allowed for more design work and has pushed me to learn more about the design process. I love what I get to do.

What are you currently working on?

My website. I just finished up the artwork for Cub Country / Jeremy Chatelain (formerly of Jets To Brazil). I’m also getting back in my studio painting and looking forward to a show in 2009.

Adde has also been good enough to send us a few contact sheets of some of the work:

Check out the full audio cassette cover I found! Who buys tape ?!?

It’s been a while since i’ve seen any album covers that spins my wheels enough that i feel like talking about it. But when Jason Noto, from the very talented and creative Morning Breath Inc sent us the latest QOSTA cover and all the accompanying artwork, i decided i oughta pull my finger out.

I think it’s worth mentioning that QOTSA’s previous album ‘Lullabies To Paralyze’, although a great album, had one of the worst covers i’ve ever laid eyes on. It looked like someone’s friend had a friend, and that friend had a cousin who did “design”,who took a flaccid stab at it.

So it was a relief to see such a badass cover created for ‘Era Vulagaris’. It’s the kind of cover that you’d want on vinyl, even if you didn’t have an LP player, just so you could look at it in a larger format. The font it perfect, the illustrations remind me of 50′s-60′s drive-in food intermission characters (like the ones playing on the screen behind Danny in ‘Grease’ while he’s banging on about that chick Sandy, who he ain’t banging), except these characters are a pair of skeezy burnout hoods bathed in hot pants pink.

Jason was kind enough to fill us in on the how the cover design came about.

“So here’s a little back story of the QOTSA Era Vulgaris package. We have had a working relationship with their management for some time, working with some of the other artist, etc. The groups manager thought we would be a good match for Josh’s mindset and wanted to get us on board with the Era artwork. We sent them samples of some of our more personal work so the band could vibe off of. Their was a page in our book “The Early Bird” that struck a chord with Josh, it was an illustration of a retro advertising style of beer and cigarette characters.”

“It was at this point that we could share the same appreciation of nostalgia in art, and a sense of fucked up humor. Josh was really into the idea of that bizarre retro vibe and the idea of cute characters that have that underlying purpose of enticing kids to get into fucked up habits. Josh threw a few ideas our way of characters he’d like to see, and we just ran with it. This may be one of the first packages we’ve done that had a true taste of the kind of artwork we love to produce.”

Album back cover and vinyl singles.

Inside Packing Poster

Single covers and inserts.

Massaged fun holes everyone!

I initially though the packaging for ALB’s album was of a retro sandwhich iron. Yum! I love toasted sandwhiches but Charlie from Discograph informed me it was actually a retro 45 record player called a “Univox Mange-Disque” manufactured from 1975-1980. This made a lot more sense than having the CD package based of a toaster.

Note: Understanding the French language will help you get the most out of this post.

The best part of running Sleevage is finding out about new bands. I’ve become a music encylopedia with ALB being added to the A chapter. For those that don’t know the band here’s a snippet from their bio.

“Oubliez la jeune scène rock parisienne et ses baby rockers clonés, la french touch post Justice, ou encore cette satanée new rave, ALB sont de jeunes musiciens français mais ne s’inscrivent dans aucune de ces modes. Ni aucune autre d’ailleurs. Leur premier album, Mange-Disque sort sous forme de mange-disque orange, avec livret-notice, et autocollants de fausses pochettes 45t, un travail d’orfèvre mais aussi de grands enfants passionnés qui n’en font qu’à leurs têtes.”

Whoops that was the French bio :)

One thing I took fromt he full bio was that the band are big retro gaming nuts. This would explain the classic gaming feel to some of the tunes.

The artwork was designed by the bands lead signer Clément Daquin and his girlfriend/designer Emilie Vast.

“She made the photos for the 12″ covers and the booklet graphism, and i designed/3D modeled the box, and the 12″ covers’s graphism. Everything is home-made, from the conception to the “put in da box”.”

I asked Charlie if the special pack was expensive and did it make a difference having that point of difference.

“The cost per disc is low and yes I do think that the packaging helped generate interest in both press & TV. ” by “The cost per disc is quite high but Rise Recording’s strategy was to have a price in store lower than most CDs. It worked efficiently. Yes I do think that the packaging helped generate nterest in both press & TV. “

Here’s the case sans hand.

Here’s a couple of photo of what a real “Mange-Disque” looks like. I’m too young to have really got into records. I only had a handful that were handed down to me so I don’t think I’ve ever had or touched a 45rpm record. I vaguely remember a switch on my record player which made the records play fast and thats it.

You can actually buy the last one on Ebay here.

Check this gallery for some even wilder mini players. Snakeskin never goes out of fashion.

Rather than explain the packaging I thought I’d let this attratice French TV host do it for me. I don’t speak French but she seems to explain the full pack fairly well.

The only thing she failed to mention was the really cool black CD (Just like a Playstation disc). It’s even printed with thick ink to give it grooves.

The album has 12 tracks and also have a mini album cover for each song. I’m not sure of the reason for this but it’s nice anyway. I asked Clem about the idea behind these.

“The 12″ covers are the beginning of the work. We started by design a cover for each song, like if our first album was a kind of “best of”, a coolection of our best 12inches aronds the years… Some are inspired from cliché-covers, typical from the decade we want to insert our songs in. Then we designed the box as the object missing between these covers.”

Here’s an animated gif from the bands Myspace page which sums it all up.

They have also released a remix album which is download only I believe. The cover for this reflects the album’s design.

Also there is a flat designed cover for online stores. As the 3D object doesn’t work as a tiny thumbnail that well.

Here’s the first video for the first single “CV-209″ from the album and it’s quite a catchy tune.

The band even volunteered to put the special packs together.

You can spot a limited edition blue prototype version of the cover in the bottom photo.If you spot one of these snap it up as there’s only a handful around.

The bands label Rise Recordings has a few other interesting French bands under their wing. ALB being one of their latest signings.

Useless Fact: An Alb is one of the liturgical vestments of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and many Protestant churches. Source

ALB is also the stock market code for the Albemarle company. Manufacturer of polymers and fine chemicals, including additives and intermediates used in agricultural and cleaning products and drilling compounds. WOW!

P.S: Also is it just me or is France pumping out a lot of great music lately?

Kisschasy’s second album “Hymns for the Nonbeliever” takes the form of an old bible which was inspired by the album’s title. The band actually briefed the studio with “we want a bible” and Mathematics took it from there.

Here’s the back cover as I know some people have asked for the front and back of all covers.

The cover was actually scanned from an old bible found at a local bookshop. Then touched up with gold foil to make it seem authentic, although it’s hard to see it on the flat jpg. Here’s a photo which shows off the “very expensive” gold foiling.

Also you’ll see the band’s official website reflects the album artwork. The header image you see on the site is the same artwork found in the booklet. But I’m not a fan of it so have gently skipped over it.

The type was all hand rendered then scanned in. Here’s a couple of scans.

The singles all share a similar art direction which not only helps keep the entire albums marketing cohesive but also saves the designers from having to undergo the long process of approvals.

That said the first single is probably the most removed from the others.

Spray on Pants not only has a great title but also a fun film clip.

The latest single off the album “String and Drums” is another ornate looking Bible type cover.

One interesting thing I found on Amazon is their version of the cover has been scanned by a blind gimp which resulted in it looking like this.

Nice work Amazon. You’d think part of Amazon’s job would be to get the covers right. Or maybe the label could have fixed this.

Seeing these old bibles got me interested in the look and feel of old books. A quick Google image search for “Old Bible” pulls up some interesting photos.

I wonder how many other books would last 150+ years. Certainly not my MAD magazine collection that’s for sure.

Those with more money than they know what to do with and a deep sense of religion can start an antique bible collection. Here you can browse bibles from $50k – $900,000.

While researching this cover I noticed that Kischasy’s first album is fantastic as well which I will have to post soon as I’ve just been sent all the artwork for that.

It’s not just Michael Jackson releasing a deluxe (remixed) version of a classic album. Beck is getting in on the action too with the release of the Deluxe Edition of Odelay. Just a mere 12 years after is original release.

The scribble of a face might help people decipher that it’s actually a breed of dog jumping over the bar. A Komondor, a rare Hungarian breed of dog with thick matted hair. I think Lenny Kravitz has one :)

Here’s another image from the same set. It would have been nice of them to use this photo for the deluxe edition. 12 years later and the dog has moved 20 cm. Photo from here.

If you want more intfo there are plenty of breeder sites about the dogs like this one.

Look how adorable they look as a puppy! LOL cats can get stuffed.

They also come in a variety of colours and shades.

Ok, enough about the dog. But if you think the dog is weird check out this Blob Fish photo I found while researching this.

Ok, back to the cover at hand.

Above is the “Big Active” version of the cover. Which differs from what’s seen on Amazon and other online stores which has the “deluxe edition” watermark. Which was picked up in the comments as probably a sticker/plastic slip that is standard for all Universal deluxe releases.

It reminds me of the “Print is Dead” cover which we featured a while back.

The artwork for the original album has been completely defaced and reworked but it’s essentially the same. Which is an easy analogy to make when talking about the contents of the actual double album.

It’s as if you lent the album to your younger brother and it comes back defaced. You didn’t have a chance to thank him for the “artwork” as he returned it directly to your CD stack 2 years earlier and you didn’t realise. It’s too late to do anything about it so you just end up smashing something of his and hiding it under his bed as payback.

Here’s a few more pieces from the original reworked.

The cover was deisned by Big Active’s Mat Maitland. The same guy behind “The Information” cover. Big Active have also reworked their site and now has direct links to the work! This means I can link directly to where I ripped their images from like here.

There are also reported in Pitchfork that placeholder lyrics were wrongly printed on the first run of the album.

“It turns out the “Deluxe Edition” reissue of Beck’s sampledelic Odelay that shipped this week came with a lyric booklet full of mistakes. According to a press release, “The first pressing of the recent Odelay: Deluxe Edition was found to have gone out with un-proofed lyrics that were taken from a lyrics website as placeholders for layout purposes. Beck apologizes for this unfortunate oversight and is making arrangements for the corrected lyrics to be available gratis via Beck.com. Subsequent pressings of the Odelay: Deluxe Edition will also include the corrected lyrics.”

So if you have a version of that it might be worth something down the track.

The album has also spawned some fan made film clips. These weren’t clips created in response to a competition to create a film clip but actual ones created for fun! Imagine that.

And if you enjoyed those two then you probably wont enjoy this one.

You gotta love fans.

What I enjoy about posting on Sleevage is not only do I get to explore music genres and bands I’d normally ignore (or even avoid) but I also learn about new artists, photographers, designers and other artistic people along the way. This example from “Editors” had me spend several hours checking out Idris Khan’s work, the other artists that accuse him of plagiarism and the works of “Bernd and Hilla Becher” from whom Idris appropriates much of his work from. This is why posts to Sleevage have been coming through a little slower. Rather than find a nice cover and spend 5 minutes posting it up I spend a few days trying to find out as much as I can about it and subsequently forgot to post all together.

The cover image makes me visualize a stadium, a racetrack or Zoetrope that were used for animation back in the 1800′s. Actually it’s a collection of industrial buildings photographed by “Bernd and Hilla Becher” layered together digitally by Idris Khan and is an example of the style that made the artist famous. This is the first example that I can see where he has added colour. I really like the addition of colour as opposed to the B/W work.

Below is a few more examples of Idris’s work that go beyond the building montages. I got many of these from this site. His style is to multilayer items until this zen type of image appears. Like a data visualization but all layered on top of one another.

Below is “every… page of the Holy Koran, 2004″

Here’s “every… stave of Frederick Chopin’s Nocturnes for the piano, 2004″

And finally “every… William Turner postcard from Tate Britain, 2004″

I do prefer the work that revolves around the buildings though. Maybe it’s the more structured result or the beauty from the ugly. It’s certainly something I hadn’t seen before from the world of art. Here’s two more examples before I move on taken from this site. I imagine these look even better in real life at over 2m high.

“every…Bernd and Hilla Becher Prison type Gasholders: 2004″

“every…Bernd and Hilla Becher Spherical type Gasholders: 2004″

Here’s a quick interview with Idris from The Guardian. Yep he’s a Mac.

There are so many Bernd and Hilla Becher bookson Amazon you can see Idris having no trouble putting his kids through college creating more work in the future.

I really like the work of Bern & Hilla Becher. The repetition in nature is always seen as beautiful but so is the repetition in manmade objects. In isolation it might be seen as ugly but when presented with a series like below you can’t but help but appreciate the mundane.

I’ve been doing this myself for a while although with Abandoned Chairs and Mattresses.

It’s also nice to see that the Editor’s official website also reflects the album artwork. It’s a small thing but as bands don’t release albums every year it makes sense that the website adapt to the new release. Which reminds me I haven’t even posted the several other singles and EP’s from this album.

And lastly the “Push Your Head Towards the Air” single of which this is the biggest image I could find.

If you want to learn more about Editors or Bernd & Hilla Becher check out these products on Amazon.

I leave you with this wonderful photo from the cover of Water Towers.

So next time you’re on a road trip somewhere I hope you’ll pop out the digital camera to capture something unique (not ugly), rather than the usual happy snaps of smiling friends. Oh and Happy Easter :)

Update: I decided to take every cover posted here and do a montage. What a silly idea that was as! Working with 100+ layers in photo shop is annoying, oh what will it look like with this opacity = 10 minutes of changing each layer!!! But anyway here’s the results of an hours work.

Every cover set to Soft light @ 100% opacity: 2008

Every cover set to Soft light @ 10% opacity: 2008

Every cover set to Overlay @ 10% opacity: 2008

While Dev Hynes aka Lightspeed Champion was a member of now-defunct noise-punk metal outfit Test Icicles, Lightspeed Champion isn’t so much an alter ego as much as it is just Dev, the crafty singer-songwriter. His debut album, Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, is Americana-tinged country-folk-pop with a warm sound helped along by producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley), and it is as straightforward musically as is the accompanying cover art.

But underneath the music are emotionally-charged and brutally honest lyrics touching upon racism, sexuality, and coming-of-age anxieties; and the same contrast goes for the package with a rather traditional, 1960s-style aesthetic for the front and back, with an inside that is a more complicated collection of collage and illustration.

The front recalls a bygone era of cover art with the artist as the central figure accompanied with snazzy colours, an”Artist” and “Title” heading, and a tracklisting — almost like a program for a concert or play informing the listener exactly what is included and presenting the album as a whole, complete work.

I found some images on Amazon and in the Retro Records group on flickr, that share the same sort of essence as this album.

You get the feeling Dev is referencing this look with a wink, especially with the big-eyed bunny, bright red cardigan, freshly starched shirt, and slightly askew gold bow-tie. An indie-rock Pat Boone who writes songs entitled “Everyone I Know Is Listening to Crunk”?

Elvis Costello’s covers and personal style are a nod to that era as well, especially his Greatest Hits with song titles alongside the front.

The cover photography of this album and the single “Galaxy of the Lost” were shot by British photographer Ophelia Wynne and seems indicative of her sharp and direct portraiture style that is featured on her website.

The booklet veers off a bit in its own direction with more contemporary photography by Dev in the front part. The last five booklet illustrations by Matt Cooper recall a future we thought was coming back in the 80s accompanied with lyrics in a Courier font from early computing days.

The back cover of the booklet gives us what seems like the “real” Dev in an vest probably found at a second-hand shop.

And the back of the case gives us the flip side of the front with the red, blue, and black combination and title giving a feeling of closure to the album.

Oh look it’s another cover which features photos in a natural history museum. This time the Durban Museum. Don’t worry this one’s different and while not having as polished photos as the others it’s still an interesting cover. Also it has an interesting title.

The bound book digi pack features four Polaroids of the band.

I think Garett in red is the only one who nailed the stunned look.

Richard Hart from Disturbance Design gave me the idea behind the design direction. “The band are from our own hometown in South Africa but Garrett, the lead singer was planning on moving to Seattle and taking the album with him in the hopes of getting a record deal. Thus we were briefed to demonstrate through the album art that they were an African band. We figured shooting them down at the local museum gave the whole African thing a humourous spin.”

Attack of the Monkeys
The photo on the CD of the monkey with huge teeth it’s pretty freaky. I always imagined our simian friends as friendly creatures but this and Ground Components cover is a reminder to never get into a bar fight with a ape or monkey of any kind.

Stuffed Animals:
With all the comments generated about Interpol’s latest album it’s interesting to note that Superhotjoy released this limited edition album a month before “Our love to admire” was released. I think Richard says it best here “Luckily by then most of the 500 copies had already been sold and we and the band managed to avoid looking like we’d done a cheap knock-off.”

See for yourself. Note: the Superhotjoy photo was not used for the cover though and they actually have some reason (if small) to use animals in their concept.

Here’s the lead singer telling an antelope (or Springbok) all about the cover fiasco.

If you want to see more of Disturbance’s work check their Flickr page. Or, like me, if you want to look at photos of their office with envy check here.

I think we can now officially say that any type of stuffed animal museum is off limits to all bands for at least a decade. Spread the word.

Sydney band Faker settled in to Los Angeles during the past northern hemisphere summer to record their second full-length album, Be The Twilight. It’s a collection of songs about the space between day and night and lead singer/songwriter Nathan Hudson’s own fixation with twilight and facing your fears.

“I’ve had a fear of twilight ever since I was a kid,’ Hudson says. ‘Anything could happen.” That sort of sentiment is reflected in an album of chaotic, very danceable, somewhat brooding pop.

The artwork by Sydney creatives Debaser draws upon the album’s theme as well as a cinematic and literary connection to LA: there’s a noir-ish, something-might-be-lurking-in-that-swamp feeling to the cover image, with the band’s name standing out in striking contrast and looking a bit like the Hollywood sign. This setting was created on a small, intricate scale at Debaser’s studio and photographed, with cigar-smoke cleverly providing the haze — and avoiding the cost of a smoke machine!

The album’s booklet stays on theme with photographs, illustrations, and tightly condensed blocks of text. The booklet literally takes you inside, with the outside exterior scene peeking in through the window. The photos show what Barton Fink’s room and affects might have looked like if he was in rock band, with old-timey props painted and given a bit more of a sinister treatment by Debaser principal David Homer.

Booklet photos:

Still from the film Barton Fink:

Faker themselves are featured in a centre four-panel illustration that gives them a classic comic book rendering — they look like they are ready to take on the night one gig at a time in a J. Scott Campbell comic.

On the disc itself, the macabre skeleton paintings are front and centre:

The back cover tracklisting and credits are laid-out like titles on a film poster and give a strong and familiar way of laying out the fine print as well as effectively presenting the album as a whole piece.

Debaser has created album art for the esteemed likes of Paul Kelly, The Cat Empire, and Ben Lee. Their artwork for Powderfinger’s Dream Days At The Hotel Existence won this year’s ARIA award for best cover art.

Check out the Sleevage post on Faker’s first album, Addicted Romantic.

I’ve loved this cover for the abundantly talented Brendan Benson’s 3rd album since i first saw it. Of course it ticks the retro box for me but it’s also so beautifully restrained and sophisticated. I was lucky enough to get in contact with the designer of the album artwork David Calderley at Graphic Therapy, who took the time to give me the background story on the creation of the album and supply various artwork for the album and singles.

” The Brendon Benson Cover was a bit of a challenge and had a few incarnations during the process. The initial idea was presented to the artist as one image of him and a girl relating to each other, but clearly all ‘disjointed as they were on a series of boxes in a white space, which had a nod to early 70s ‘commercial art’ and the album had a feel of that period. I had one day to shoot. We did a location shoot in Asbury Park, New Jersey (for press and possible singles) I also set up a white backdrop for the ‘studio’ clean body shots. We did a second studio still life shoot of various white boxes of various compositions. Then in post mapped on combinations of Brendan and a female model. He liked it but did not think it would go down well with his audience. After many incarnations of the idea we agreed on a combination of boxes with various elements that representaed his ‘alternative to love’…. Wine, Smoking, Art, his Cat, etc…it ran into so many choices I threw in the Kitchen sink!. It was finally approved, with one additional request to make it look like it had been in a shop window for a few years so I ‘aged it’, and we were done. All the additional singles were different combinations of boxes with single elements on them. The logo font was from Bookman Swash with some additional handrawn ligatures, together with Avant Garde sub text.”

Alternate cover artwork.

Artwork for the singles.

From the obscure Vancouver indie band Vonnegut Dollhouse, comes an impressively crafted packaging piece. The cover design stands on its own too and plays along nicely with the overall concept. Designed by Jeff Harrison of Rethink Communications in close collaboration with the band, the cd unfolds to reveal a dollhouse complete with detailed interiors (that were made in miniature and photographed), a fold in roof, the cd as the feature shag carpet rug and popup characters of the band you can snap off and place inside.

Alyson from the band kindly explained the process of how the cover came about and those who were involved:

The members of Vonnegut Dollhouse met with Jeff, and showed him all sorts of images and things that inspire us, including books, cd’s, movies, artwork. Jeff took this information in and went off for a little while to think. Then Jeff came up with the idea for the album to be an actual dollhouse, complete with pop-out dolls of the band members. Jeff showed me his schematics for the dollhouse which got me very excited about the idea. Several people at Rethink and myself (Alyson Fun) and my mom, Gail Budd (controller at Rethink) went on a mission to find props to be used in the photography for the dollhouse. I contributed the lovely brie and wine pieces seen on the kitchen table, and also the french bulldog, who was immortalized as a doll. Paddy Culhane who is a miniatures aficianado, built the sets, including the giant speakers, and Jeff used furniture gathered by the fine people of Rethink. Jeff feng shui’d the sets and props and Clinton Hussey Photographed them.

500 cd’s will be available, to be released independently by the band in a few weeks on cdbaby.com.