There are some artists out there who are so iconic, so huge and transformative, that no surname is ever needed when referring to them.  Elvis.   Madonna.  Cher.  Bono.  Rihanna.  These mononymical phenomena are such cultural landmarks that their last names are redundant in some cases, irrelevant or almost completely unknown in others.

And then there are this week’s batch of artists, who seem to hope that if they refer to themselves by one name, we will all either a) assume they are already as huge as the aforementioned superstars, or b) be sucked in by their chutzpah and self-aggrandizement and make them that huge.  Let’s see if any of these albums inspires us to take the bait, shall we?

Dondria – Dondria vs. Phatffat

This album art is a bona fide success, in that with one glance at it, I know with 100% certainty that the contents are not remotely geared toward me, and listening to it would be like having my teeth drilled with a Jolly Rancher.  At the same time, if you are a twelve-year-old girl who stays up late every night eating candy and IMing your best friend and tweeting about Justin Bieber or Twilight or whatever, then this album is telling you that it is going to be YOUR SHIT.  Of course, you’re not actually buying the album, you’re probably downloading it illegally or burning your BFF’s copy (returning it only after leaving sugary fingerprints all over it), but you’ll totally spring for tickets when Dondria and Phatffat (is that a person?  I don’t even want to know) hit your town on tour, right?  If your mom is free to give you a ride, anyway.

Doro – Fear No Evil (Ultimate Collector’s Edition)

I had to break one of my rules and do a tiny bit of research on this just to ascertain that Doro is, in fact, a solo artist and not a band – and I think I could easily do a whole column based on her covers alone.  But don’t worry, everything I learned was wiped from my brain as I closely studied this incredibly dense piece of artwork (thank you Amazon and your zoom function).  This really has it all: Hot, mostly-naked lady!  Tribal tattoos!  Lightning!  Castles!  Wizards!  Skulls!  Fetish zombies?  Shiny gold lettering!  So, yeah, a serious soft-core glam metal type situation going on here.  Again, I am warned well away, but I can hear the boners of young metal fans around the nation springing to attention at the release of this album.

Lissie – Catching a Tiger

I like this cover.  In fact, my only problem with it is that I find the name “Lissie” to be somewhat grating, but that’s not necessarily her fault, is it?  It could be her name is Elisabeth, and she elected to have people call her “Lissie,” but let’s assume that’s not the case, and even if it is a nickname, it’s one her parents gave her at a very young age, and she just stuck with it.  Heck, if I were a girl, my name would have been Elizabeth – and I probably would have looked kind of like Lissie here, now that I think about it – and maybe my parents would have called me Lizzie and I would have thought it was a good idea to use that as my nom de rock.  So, there but for the grace of gender, etc., etc.

But yes, the photo is a really nice one.  The composition is great; her expression is kind of confused, maybe a bit worried – I swear I see a little Tippi-Hedren-in-The-Birds there, though not quite that terrified.  Maybe there’s a tornado coming?  I don’t love the handwriting – as with so many covers, I think this would be better without any text – but it works well enough.  We’re not being pounded over the head with genre signifiers, but I feel pretty sure that her voice is pretty and there are acoustic guitars involved.  Unlike the first two installments, this cover would not send me running from the listening station.

Nils – What the Funk?

It’s funny, because “What the Funk?” is not too different – just one letter away – from what I said to myself upon seeing this album cover.  I have no idea if this record is old or new, or who Nils is, or even what gender Nils is.  Normally I would assume Nils to be a man’s name, but this picture has our Nils looking like a cross between Marianne Faithful and Rod Stewart, and wearing some intense shoulder pads.  Design-wise, my eyes just keep coming back to the way the album title is set off by white, standing out jarringly from the rest of the art.  This makes me think “bad Photoshop job,” which makes me think this is a new release going for a retro look.  Whatever the situation, it’s pretty much horrendous all around.

As far as what kind of tunes Nils is rocking, I guess I’d have to take the title at face value and assume there is some attempt at funk or soul or blues being peddled here, but the photo of the alleged funk-purveyor certainly does not have me optimistic as to the funkiness of the contents.

Wason – Alma Mia

I don’t know who this dude is (or how to pronounce his name – does it rhyme with “Jason,” or is there some kinda Frenchy thing going on?), but I like him.  This is another fairly simple photo that totally comes together around the subject’s expression.  There’s so much going on there – disappointment, disgust, bewilderment – that you just keep coming back to that face.  And then the way the background is blown out to give you a sense of place without distracting you from the foreground – the man, the umbrella, the pole – is really nice.  And again, I’m not quite sure what kind of music this guy is doing, but I’m definitely willing to give it a spin.

This is a really good cover, but it could have been better.  I don’t mind the font they used for his name, but the red handwriting font for the album title (and it is a font, unlike the Lissie cover) is just unnecessarily ornamental.  And then for some reason there’s a barely perceptible fingerprint behind the artist name and title, that adds nothing and detracts quite a bit from the overall simplicity of the cover.  Overdesign almost claims another victim, but the photo is strong enough that it’s not totally ruined.