foxjuliemorstad.jpg

When looking at Neko Case album artwork, we could split it into two “periods”: the earlier photo album covers and the newer graphic based covers. All of which are marvelous.

The Julie Morstad drawings hark back on the sort of eerie-but-nice children’s book illustrations we loved but feared as children. Likewise the art for her excellent live album, “The Tigers Have Spoken”, scares but enthralls:

album_tigers.jpg600px-neko_case_-_the_tigers_have_spoken.jpg

The earlier death scene themes – admittedly without the blood – are memborable and curious, particularly the Chris Buck “Blacklisted” cover photos:

neko_back_c.jpg
album_blacklisted.jpg

The “Furnace Room Lullabies” cover photo is simpler, less stagey, but tends to rely on the beauty of this “dead” women to compel us to gawk:

album_furnace.jpg

The allure of Neko’s cover art is that it appears to be narrative based; not just evocative of a moment or suggestive as to what the musician(s) might be capable of. Her cover art does not define the music, rather it gives us an idea of the tone – waif’s head, good looking corpse, woman under get away van, etc. – of the music and what sort of stories she might tell us. And Neko is, if anything, a storyteller.

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Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

foxjuliemorstad.jpg

When looking at Neko Case album artwork, we could split it into two “periods”: the earlier photo album covers and the newer graphic based covers. All of which are marvelous.

The Julie Morstad drawings hark back on the sort of eerie-but-nice children’s book illustrations we loved but feared as children. Likewise the art for her excellent live album, “The Tigers Have Spoken”, scares but enthralls:

album_tigers.jpg600px-neko_case_-_the_tigers_have_spoken.jpg

The earlier death scene themes – admittedly without the blood – are memborable and curious, particularly the Chris Buck “Blacklisted” cover photos:

neko_back_c.jpg
album_blacklisted.jpg

The “Furnace Room Lullabies” cover photo is simpler, less stagey, but tends to rely on the beauty of this “dead” women to compel us to gawk:

album_furnace.jpg

The allure of Neko’s cover art is that it appears to be narrative based; not just evocative of a moment or suggestive as to what the musician(s) might be capable of. Her cover art does not define the music, rather it gives us an idea of the tone – waif’s head, good looking corpse, woman under get away van, etc. – of the music and what sort of stories she might tell us. And Neko is, if anything, a storyteller.

Posted by Ash on 29 August, 2007
Album: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Artist: Neko Case
Cover Artist: Julie Morstad
Record Label: Anti
00s, Album Art, Art-based, Folk




  • http://www.rnrnonsense.com bob_vinyl

    Fox Confessor is a great cover. The beauty is obvious even at a glance, but the horror is more subtle. It’s kind of a freakout as you notice the details.

  • Nick

    I like how she uses primarily one font for all her releases (even in Furnace Room Lullaby on the inside, though the cover text is blurred).

    I’ve been seeing that font everywhere including most of Lyle Lovett’s (beautifully designed) albums.

    Anyone know what it is?

  • http://thisisnowhere.wordpress.com Vance

    I just finished reading Ann Rule’s book, “Green River, Running Red” about Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer.

    As “Deep Red Bells” is obviously about being a woman growing up in the Pacific Northwest during this time period, I had to take a second look at the album cover for “Blacklisted”.

    What I saw made me about jump out of my seat – there’s Neko, lying on the ground of some parking lot next to a car with Washington state license plates, as an aircraft takes off over her head.

    The unsettling part about it is that the vast majority of the murders that Ridgeway committed were all in the area around the SeaTac airport. He would pick up prostitutes on the highway that ran nearby, and then would kill them in the secluded, run down areas purchased by the airport as part of their expansion. Quite a few bodies were found all around the airport as well, as I recall.

    That Neko. Not only purty, but smart, too…

  • http://reidmix.wordpress.com/ reidmix

    From far away or when flipping through the music store, this cover always looks to me like she has really big hair.