In his monthly column, Levi Fuller will review, dissect, interpret, and otherwise riff on the cover art of new releases he has never heard, ideally by artists about whom he knows little to nothing.

Ke$ha – Animal

Looking at this album cover–not knowing a thing about Ke$ha, of course (except an assumed fondness on her part for pecuniary matters, judging by the unique spelling of her name)–a scenario unfolds in my mind:

The Recording Artist has been found, perhaps huddled on an L.A. corner, perhaps waiting in line at the American Idol auditions, perhaps wowing the families in her high school’s production of Pippin; no matter, the Recording Artist has been found. The songs have been written, the backing musicians paid, her vocals have been recorded, and rerecorded, and tweaked, and autotuned (not necessarily in the conspicuously stylized manner of many late-00′s artists, but at least in the manner in which this little bit of technology was initially intended to be used). The songs have been mixed, the album mastered–compressed within an inch of its already limited life. She has been styled. A few select live performances have been scheduled.

The album is almost ready for release. The Artist should be happy; isn’t this what she wanted? Isn’t this the dream that she always dreamt on that LA corner, in line at the auditions, while being driven to rehearsals for that godforsaken play in her parents’ SUV? She realizes that she is nowhere in this album; these songs could be by anybody (in fact they are), could have been sung by anybody. Where is she? It’s her name on the cover, isn’t it?

“I want more control,” she says to the Suits. “I want this album to be mine, to be me, to show the world who I am.”

The Suits pause, scratch their heads, throw worried glances at each other.

“Well . . .” begins one, not sure how this sentence will end. His eyes stop on some art supplies his daughter brought with her to pass her time while she visits him in his office (it’s a half day at school) – some glitter, some glue, some fashion magazines. “How about you do the cover art? Here, you can use this promo photo we shot the other day. Here are some supplies. Just make it your own–you know, really personalize it, show us who you really are–then drop it off in the art department at the end of the day. How’s that sound?”

The Recording Artist is appeased. The picture is distressed, the glue and glitter applied. The cover is designed.

Phil Vassar – Traveling Circus

Phil Vassar is trying to tell us something with this album cover. I get the impression of some kind of kooky, zany, uh, what’s the word I’m looking for here? Ah, yes! Circus. It’s like a crazy rock ‘n’ roll circus, though I think that phrase has been used. So I guess ‘Traveling Circus’ will have to do. So it’s a circus, but it is rock and roll too. He’s standing on a knob! (Or maybe some kind of HVAC element that I’m not familiar with. No, probably a knob.) And there’s a giant keyboard dancing across the background! And another keyboard going around his hat! And he’s holding – well, I guess it’s supposed to be a whip, but it looks like either a giant cane that he’s holding in a very awkward manner, or a whip that someone just off the frame is trying to wrench from his grasp. Hey, you! Give Phil his whip back! That’s not your whip!

For the most part, I have no problem with this album cover. The drawing has a nice energy to it, and it looks like it was actually drawn on a piece of paper with real drawing implements, not cobbled together in Photoshop. Maybe not the finest piece of art ever committed to paper, but the guy gets points for effort.

That said, I do have a couple of quibbles:
1) Those odd little colored shapes off to the left. I assume that this art wraps around to the back on the physical artifact, so in the context of holding a CD in your hands, it makes sense, but 95% (at least) of the people who see this art are never going to hold the actual CD in their hand, and in this context, those shapes are just distracting. We don’t have enough information to be able to figure out what these things are (the top one might be the end of a banner? The little triangle below it could be anything). Neither the yellow at the top left nor the pink slightly below it appear anywhere else on the cover, so they stick out like a sore thumb covered in bright pink paint. Artists, mind your edges!
2) Remember that bit about not being cobbled together in Photoshop? Well, there is one obvious, glaring exception to that, and it also happens to be the focus of the entire cover. The title in the sign (topped with a jaunty, hand-drawn ‘PV’) is rendered in a quite obviously computer-generated font – tweaked and pushed and pulled to render it all the more quirky and circus-like, but still a jarring contrast to the hand-drawn flow of the rest of the art. Fonts are almost always tricky, I understand – I have wrung my own hands over many a font decision – but I should think a basic factor would be that they need to sit in the art in a logical way, whatever that should mean on a case by case basis. Unfortunately, some designer has ruined the home-grown, quirky vibe of this little drawing with their aggressively computer-generated lettering.

Overall, though, I’d say this is a successful album cover for Phil Vassar – certainly compared to his previous efforts, anyway