Well, this is a bummer.

With the impending demise of Is Greater Than, it seems that this will be my last column for this here web site, and the last installment ever of Records by Their Covers (assuming HuffPo doesn’t come calling). Keep your eye out for the coffee table book, though. It’s been fun dissecting album covers and displaying my musical ignorance for the world on a monthly basis, and being a part of the Is Greater Than family. I tip my hat to Paul Davis for his efforts, and I wish him all the best in future endeavors.

I didn’t really have a choice for the theme for this final piece. All I had to do was search [internet retailer]‘s music releases for “End,” sort by date, and voila! A delightful pile of crap, with a few sparkling diamonds embedded in it.

All Ends – All Ends

There’s a lot going on here. We have two delightfully begothed frontwomen, a couple guys in the back who seem to have a Black-Crowes-in-Hot-Topic sort of thing going on, and then there’s a guy wearing a bizarre hat standing behind the ladies who looks vaguely homeless, although he does have a nice shiny chain which seems to match the one the redhead on the right is wearing. There’s also some serious abuse of Photoshop going on here, what with the swoopy, blurry clouds taking the top of Red’s hair off, and the truly awful font choices. I’m going to give the band a little credit and assume this is another in-house job, but somehow I have no doubt that it accurately reflects the music inside. With an album cover like this, there is no way this band isn’t terrible.

I Am Many – To Every End There Is a Beginning

It’s a funny thing about album titles with the word “end” in them: you get a lot of cliches and tired tropes and rephrasings of the same general concept. So here we have the band I Am Many with their entry, To Every End There Is a Beginning. And while it’s easy to say “damn, that’s frickin’ profound, Einstein. What teabag did you read that on?” there’s a reason it’s a cliche: it’s true. Take our friend Paul here. He is, alas, ending Is Greater Than, but I’m sure as he closes up this shop he will be opening the door on another, exciting new chapter in his life — to torturously mix a metaphor or two and throw another cliche in the mix. So let’s not find fault with I Am Many (or any of these other bands) for their overly familiar album title. Instead, let’s praise them for their intriguing, minimalist album design. I’m going to guess based merely on the logo here that they are a band of the heavyish persuasion, but it’s clear they’re not by-the-number metal or anything like that. They’ve made it clear that they have arty, modernist inclinations. I’m certainly curious to hear what the band behind this cover sounds like.

The Living End – The Ending Is Just the Beginning Repeating

See, there we go again; another pseudo-philosphical rephrasing of this end = beginning concept, this time helpfully illustrated with an ouroboros, a spirally thing we’ve all seen a million times, and a classic optical illusion. This album cover isn’t terrible, but between the Ventures font, the clip-art graphics, and the tired title concept, I think I would go for I Am Many’s offering before checking this one out. If I were to hazard a guess as to what this band sounds like based purely on the art, I would say Tortoise playing surf-rock. Which now makes me want to listen to them more . . .

Peter Green – The End of the Game

This is either a reissue of some classic, forgotten (by me, at least) electronica from the ’70s or an absolutely brilliant new cover meant to evoke that era. Between the roaring cheetah (which, by the way, is exactly what I looked like when Paul told me he was folding the site) and the video game font it’s obvious this record totally rules, though. I’ll be checking it out as soon as I finish this piece.

Tasters – Reckless Till the End

I don’t even know what to say about this, but it’s so gag-inducingly awful I had to include it. First of all, for a second the band’s name reminded me of the classic third-wave ska band The Toasters, whom I saw many times in my high school rude boy days and totally loved. Tasters, I’ve never heard you, but I think it’s safe to say you’re no Toasters. Stop almost using their name. Next we have the album title, Reckless Till the End. With this spelling, and without an apostrophe, I am forced to read that second word as a verb – what farmers do to soil. The end result is somewhat abstract and poetic, and I’m sure not remotely what these geniuses meant. It was bad enough when The Who convinced everyone that ‘alright’ was a word, but this is just nonsense. I would talk about the art itself, but its terribleness sends my brain into a defensive shutdown as soon as I look at it. For a band called Tasters, they have displayed a remarkable lack of taste with this album cover. I can’t imagine what the music is like, but it has to be better than this cover, right?

All Shall Perish – This Is Where It Ends

Yes indeed, this is where it ends: kneeling in the town square in front of a church and a motel, blindfolded and bound, being whipped by a man in a tie while various religious leaders condemn you. I hope this isn’t what’s happening to our Dear Leader Mr. Davis right now. I’m pretty sure based on this art that this is a contemplative album of melancholy folk music. Isn’t that the vibe you’re getting? Also, note to the copy editors out there regarding title capitalization: Just because a word has two letters doesn’t mean it’s lower case.

The thing about the way I troll for fodder for this column – going to [monolithic internet retailer]‘s web site, clicking on new music releases for a given week, seeing what catches my eye – is that I have no way of knowing whether the album covers that I write about are in fact new, or are just reissues of older albums. This is exacerbated by the fact that I’m looking for artists I’ve never heard of and don’t permit myself to do any research on them before I write about their album covers. So the odds that I will end up exposing my ignorance by writing about an established, classic artist that I’ve just never heard of are fairly high.

This month I crank those odds up a bit more by picking album covers with designs that are either inspired by classic designs of the past or, maybe actually are classic designs of the past. Once I finish writing this I’ll go and figure out what’s what, but for now we’ll just feast our eyes on some timeless (or perhaps just anachronistic) album covers.

Mànran – s/t

I’m pretty sure that this is in fact a contemporary album, but Mànran has fully embraced a classic aesthetic with this cover. It’s a simple, clean design that evokes a bygone era without seeming to be (at least to my ignorant eyes) ripping off any one specific album cover. The band’s all-black attire links up nicely to their floating band name, popping them off the washed out yet gorgeous yellows and blues of the background. I would guess based on this classic approach and the band’s look that they make pretty straightforward, sixties-influenced rock and roll, perhaps along the lines of the Who or the Stones. It looks like they might have a horn player or two in there helping round out that sound.

The Dangerous Summer – War Paint

Everything about this cover – the grainy, washed-out image, the simple, blocky font, the inclusion of the track list and label logo – screams of a bygone era. I wish I knew enough to say exactly what it is that this cover reminds me of and evokes so perfectly – maybe a late sixties jazz or soul album? I don’t know – but I do know that they got it (whatever it is) just right without seeming to try too hard. Like the best tributes, this cover works very well on its own as a tasteful piece of classic design. The Dangerous Summer could be a jazz group, or a soul group, or a contemporary rock band that weaves jazz and/or soul influences into their sound. They could also be something else entirely: Bedroom folk? Garage rock? Ska? Hard to say. But whatever they do, I’m sure it’s quite tasteful and well-conceived.

Down to the Bone – The Main Ingredients

As with the previous album, I had to double- and triple-check to make sure I didn’t have the band name and album title swapped. (There is a band called War Paint – or, I guess, Warpaint – but as far as I can tell they have nothing to do with our guys up above.) Maybe I’m old fashioned (OK, I’m definitely old fashioned), but I just think “The Main Ingredients” sounds more like a band name than “Down to the Bone.” Be that as it may, these guys are called Down to the Bone, and I feel pretty confident calling this one as a ’70s revival soul record. Everything from the font to the ‘fro to the purple and cream color palette pretty much screams groovy get-down good times, am I not right? This has got to be a new record, but I certainly wouldn’t do a double take if I were to flip past it sandwiched between Rufus and Mavis Staples in a musty stack of yard sale vinyl.

Yuya Uchida and the Flowers – Challenge!

Here, Yuya Uchida and gang hearken back to the freakiest of psychedelic folk, again using both the content of their image (nudity! black and white magazine! natural splendor!) and its vintage processing (grainy! washed-out!) to boldly plant their flag in a classic era. (Assuming, once again, that this isn’t an actual old psych-folk record from the ’60s – I’m pretty sure their font choice outs this record as being a product of the 21st century, but folks in Japan have always been pretty forward-thinking; maybe they just had really advanced fonts back then.) The band name and art all point, as already mentioned, to this album being a contemporary nod to the weirder folk stylings of the ’60s and ’70s. Hopefully the LP is a gatefold in order to best enable the doobie-smoking that I’m sure is recommended to enhance listening.

Beau Williams! – Bodacious!

The cover of Beau Williams!’s Bodacious! is, granted, not exactly timeless. It’s very much of a specific actual time in the not-too-distant past, and I really want to know the story behind it. I would normally say that this was clearly a product of the ’80s that had been sadly overlooked by me these past 30 or so years, and leave it at that. And yet! This image has very clearly been manipulated in more recent years. The artist name (Beau Williams!) and album title (Bodacious! [note: not Beaudacious! Why not?]) were without question added in Photoshop (Arial Black, unless I’m much mistaken) in recent years. So does this mean the album cover – and the album itself – are recent creations? (Please, please, let it be so.) Or perhaps the original album didn’t have such information on the front, and those in charge of the reissue (and I’m sure the hordes have been clamoring desperately for this reissue) decided to add it while they had the chance? There’s no way – short of a quick Internet search, that is – to know, but either way I love this record.

No, wait, I’m sorry. That’s “The H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew,” and their album You’re It!

But this cover says so much, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it just fill you with wonder? Can you even begin to imagine the story behind this album? For starters, we have the two fellows on the cover. Contrasted with the name of the band/guest, we are led to one of two conclusions: Either these two men have been chosen from among many to stand in for the entire H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew (I mean a “big band,” that’s a lot of people, right?), or in fact they themselves comprise the entire H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew. (In the latter case, I have the guy with the keyboard pegged as the Band, with homeskillet on trumpet as the much-vaunted Special Guest. I assume Chuck Mangione was busy.)

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the latter is the case. These two gentlemen probably worked very hard putting together this album that I have never heard (and, let’s be honest, probably never will). H-2 over there probably spent weeks on his arrangements, layering keys and horns and woodwinds and percussion, getting everything just right before calling in old Bobby to rehearse the trumpet parts. I can picture them now, woodshedding in H’s den for hours every weekend before heading down to the studio to lay down the tracks. Then the big day comes. They hit the studio. Everything goes aces. The MIDI horns and strings and piano do exactly what H-2 has programmed them to do; the sweet, tender woodwinds and pulsing percussion provide the perfect bed for Bobby’s dulcet tones on the trumpet. The engineer is agog. He has never heard anything so smooth. Burt Bacharach, lounging in his hot tub with a glass of chardonnay many miles away, feels a chill.

As they’re winding up the session, the engineer bouncing the final mixes, Bobby and H-2 call their wives to let them know they’ll be finished soon. An hour or so later they step out of the studio into the sun, axes in hand, dizzy with achievement, blinking and wondering if it’s just them or if the rest of the world realizes that everything is different now. They hear a juddering, woofing, chopping sound from above. Their porkpie hats are blown from their heads. What can it be? They look up, and their wives are hovering above them in a helicopter! “Congratulations, H-2!” “Congratulations, Bobby!” The wives know something special has transpired on this day, and they realized the best way – the only way, really – to mark it was with a helicopter ride. Bobby and H-2 look up at the helicopter, each at his own wife, pointing in victory and grinning to beat the band. The helicopter pilot (who is also H-2′s graphic designer), sensing an important moment, pulls out his 2.5 megapixel digital camera with built-in flash and snaps a picture. “That right there is gold,” he says to himself, looking in the viewfinder at the preview image.

As H-2 and Bobby relax at their respective homes with their respective wives over dinner, listening to the CD master that will become You’re It!, their helicopter pilot/designer (let’s call him Huey) is hard at work. He imports his triumphant image into his Gateway PC and examines it – the pointing! the snazzy shirts! It’s so great. Sure they’re looking in different directions, but you hardly notice that, right? My god, look at those shirts! H-2′s gleaming teeth! He really feels like these men are looking at him through the photo – looking into him, even – and telling him something. Telling him that he’s it. That’s it! Without conferring with Bobby and H-2, Huey realizes that he has the perfect title for this album. He opens up MS Paint and just lets the spirit take him where it will. He knows the boys will be so very pleased.

It may be well into the glorious, green, sunny season of spring – at least for those of you not stuck in the interminably cloudy, cold weather sinkhole that is Seattle these days – but that doesn’t mean everyone’s releasing bright, cheery indie-pop records about bunnies and dancing and dancing bunnies and dancing with bunnies. There are still many musicians out there crafting dark, disturbing works and putting them out whenever they damn well feel like it. If you do pick up any of these albums, you’ll probably want to wait until nightfall to put them on the old hi-fi.

Vampires Everywhere! - Kiss the Sun Goodbye

I had to scroll down far enough to make sure this album had a track list and song titles, and it wasn’t a misfiled audiobook or DVD or something. But no, apparently there is a vampire-themed band (I will just go out on a limb and make that assumption) called Vampires Everywhere! with an album called what else but Kiss the Sun Goodbye. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this album cover. It certainly is exactly what I would expect from such an album. But maybe that’s the problem; I mean, it almost seems as though the designer had some fancy, new-fangled computer program, and they just entered “Band Name: Vampires Everywhere! / Album Title: Kiss the Sun Goodbye” into it, and this is what it spat out. It’s just so perfectly high-school goth romance, you know? The only thing that really doesn’t quite fit in is the exclamation mark in the band name. That makes me wonder if the whole thing is a joke, but everything else is so deadpan and maudlin I tend to doubt that. If it is a joke, then well done, Vampires Everywhere! You got me.

A Storm of Light – As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade

I wish this image weren’t so grainy, as there’s a lot going on here that requires parsing. First, of course, we have the oh-so evocative album title, almost a short story, really. So the valley of death is becoming us . . . does that mean death is turning into people? Or perhaps that the valley of death looks really good on us? (“Oh, dear, that valley just totally becomes you!”) Or is it a backwards way of saying that we are dying? And then when whatever that first part is about is happening, some of our memories – but just the silver ones – appear to be fading. Or is it that all of our memories are silver (silver is also quite becoming), and they’re all fading? I guess that makes sense; as I die I expect that my memories will fade, regardless of what metal they’re made of.

But wait! We haven’t even gotten to the actual album art yet. Again, there’s a lot going on here: A foregrounded, disturbingly collaged figure, with a grey dismal scene (the aforementioned valley of death?) behind it. The figure has some strange headgear (headscarf/crown/halo of spears) and appears to be holding a flame in its right hand. The right side of its body looks normal, but the right side is all exposed muscle and viscera with various things poking out of it. Now this is where it gets really weird: Looking at the stuff coming out of the viscera (and man, I wish I had a bigger version of this image), we see a bunch of bric-a-brac, but what most clearly stands out to me is a giant bird (maybe a stork or a heron or something), and an upside-down ice cream cone! What in the world can any of this mean? I don’t know, but it’s totally compelling, and also completely appropriate to the dark, overwrought quality of the band name and album title, but in a way that no computer program could ever have spit out. I have no idea if I would ever want to hear this record, but I almost want to guy buy it on vinyl just so I can fully absorb its visual wonders.

Andrea Centazzo – Midnight All Day

I love the creepy simplicity of this album cover: the blurred, high-contrast, ghoulish image; the simple color palette and stark font choices. If I didn’t know better I might think it were the soundtrack to a vintage Italian horror film. Oh, wait, I don’t know any better. So maybe it is the soundtrack to an Italian horror film, but if it’s not, it’s certainly doing a great job of evoking that aesthetic and luring in potential listeners with it. I assume that the music on this CD will appeal in some way to those who would be attracted to vintage Italian horror film soundtracks, so I look forward to hearing loads of dark, synth-heavy mayhem.

Becca Stevens Band – Weightless

OK, I admit it: The main reason I wanted to feature this album is because I know what that instrument she’s holding is and I wanted to show off. It’s called a charango, and it’s an eight-stringed, South American relative of the guitar. Which presents a bit of a pickle, because if she were holding a mandolin, or even an ukulele, I think we could safely say this record is going to feature some pretty straight ahead, safely old-timey music, perhaps with a hint of vaudeville. She would have an adorably squeaky voice and sing about monocles and chamber pots and such. Maybe she tap-dances, I don’t know. But no, here she has this unabashedly ethnic instrument all mixed up in her vaguely 1900s font and clothing and color palette. So what the heck does Becca Stevens sound like? You know, I’m not even going to hazard a guess, but I bet whatever it is, she knows what she’s doing. It’s pretty rare to see a hack bust out a charango. Well played, Ms. Stevens.

Lloyd Jones – Highway Bound

An even better way to communicate the style of music you play, of course, is to list it right there on the album cover. “Traditional Folk Blues,” says Mr. Jones, and I guess I’m inclined to believe him. I mean, only a real traditional folk blues guy would play his acoustic guitar in the rain, right? I will say this album cover isn’t particularly inspiring, and does have a hint of the in-house design job about it, but there’s nothing too awful about it. I think the framing is interesting, and it’s always refreshing to see people not including their faces on their album covers. The fonts are a problem, as they so often are, but I’ve just about given up on that particular dead horse.

Alexander Abreu and Havana D’Primera – Haciendo Historia

I’m sure Mr. Abreu here is a very kind, gentle man, who coaxes the most delightful sounds out of his trumpet – somewhere along the Latin-jazz spectrum, I would imagine. I’m almost 100% sure he’s kind and gentle, but he also kind of looks like he could beat the living piss out of me as easy as sneezing. Luckily this cover is pretty nice, so I don’t have to worry about crossing him. (I’m looking into those eyes as I type this, and I’m a little nervous even saying nice things. Maybe I should just quit while I’m ahead.)

Howard Bursen – Cider in the Kitchen

Now here we have a serious, no frills, folky dude. He’s got a banjo and a vest, he’s rockin’ a sweet mustache, and he’s just chilling among the rocks and the leaves with his banjo and his vest and his ‘stache. Howard Bursen has it figured out. This is listed as a “new release,” but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume this is a reissue of something from the, let’s say, sixties? Why don’t they make album covers like this any more? Unassuming, unironic, disarming. I love it.

So yeah, based on this album cover I would say Howard Bursen is probably quite the accomplished banjo picker, who rocks out original and traditional folk numbers like you wouldn’t believe. Cider in the kitchen? More like cider in the bitchin’, am I right?

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and Stones seem like they might be along the lines of what I would have assumed Becca Stevens was without the charango: Two acoustic guitars, a steel guitar, an upright bass, plus one poor axeless lady, doing her best to hold her own with a coy pose and a come-hither stare. All of this packed into a library and framed with some classy deco filigree, making for quite the rootsy indie steampunk nerd dog whistle.

The band here is putting a lot of weight on this photo to carry the album art, which can work very well (some of my favorite album covers are just photos, no other design elements or text at all), but you need a very strong photo. This photo is just a bit too posed, a bit awkward, to suspend my disbelief that this is a bunch of people crammed into a small room with hot lights and uncomfortable chairs, doing their best to look natural and sum up their own band in one frozen moment. Sometimes that’s just too much to ask of a band, or a photo.

We’ve already covered the fact that turning to your buddy who happens to own Photoshop is probably a bad idea, but at least your friend is free (at least I really hope Christian Scott didn’t spend anything on that cover). Many CD manufacturing companies (one of the many types of businesses that have thrived in the past decade or so on the backs of struggling, self-funded musicians who will never make a dime from their own music) offer their own in-house design services, which seems like a great deal: these are professional designers! And since it’s bundled with the CD manufacturing package, you can get their services for an incredible deal! Yes, they are ‘professional’ in the sense that they are receiving (your) money for their services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those services are worth it. Let’s take a look at a few albums that a certain prominent manufacturer is touting as some of their finest in-house design work.

John Tracy – Breaking the Chain

You know what these in-house designers love? Rough, distressed backgrounds with translucent stock graphics overlaid on them. They also love taking a word from the album title and incorporating it into the album art. Brilliant! On their web site they actually pat themselves on the back for, “rather than literally breaking the chain, [using] a subtle graphic device to reinforce the message of the title.” Ohhhh, now I get it! It’s a picture of a chain, like how the title is Breaking the Chain, but at first I was like “Hey, that chain’s not broken!” But it’s interrupted by the line of text, which is sort of like being broken! Genius!

Sydney Sprague – You Gotta Start Somewhere

Ah yes, more stock overlays. This cover actually would have been all right with just the ‘funky’ background, artist-supplied Polaroid, and hand-cut/written-looking text. But the in-house expert thought, “This needs something . . . some kind of stock visual non sequitur overlay. Ah, I have just the thing!” And so he grabbed the nearest generically floral filigree, slapped it in the top left corner, and pronounced his work complete. Here’s a design tip, courtesy of a very smart friend of mine. When you’re trying to think of a little something to spice up a job and you’re about to reach for the filigree, remember the Four F’s: “Foregrounded Filigree is Flawed Fundamentally.”

The title of this album seems almost a self-aware comment on the artwork itself: You’re not a designer, and you can’t afford a real one . . . you gotta start somewhere! (On further thought, maybe that should be this company’s motto.)
Joshua Harrell – Brighter Day

We can’t entirely blame the design staff for this one. The artist did, after all, have this photo taken of himself and then decided that it was just the perfect thing for his album cover. He’s even wearing a jacket that looks like its made of stock floral filigree! But still, the designer just took a bad thing and made it so much worse. The color palette and choice of fonts are just offensive to decent sensibilities, and the little pink sparkle effects on the text blocks are almost as cheesy as the amorphous blob of stock graphic elements floating next to this poor guy’s shoulder, looking for all the world like MS Paint just puked all over him.

Next to this lovely sample, the company helpfully reminds you: “Don’t forget, you can help us understand what makes you tick by filling out a Design Information form.” Perhaps this is a subtle threat, showing the horrors that await if you don’t clearly delineate your desires by filling out said form? Consider yourself warned.

Adam Rafferty – Gratitude

Ah, there’s our old friend, the translucent stock filigree, once again! Where would these guys be without it? This could have been a perfectly fine, if somewhat subdued and nondescript, album cover. The photo isn’t super eye-catching, but nor does it catch your eyes and then make you want to gouge them out (I’m looking at you, Harrell!) It says “Hey, I’m this pretty cool guy, and I just like to hang out in my leather jacket and sunglasses, finger-pickin’ my guitar (which, by the way, has a pretty decent built-in pickup and pre-amp).” The color palette is nice and warm and mellow, and while the text is more translucent than it needs to be (did they just discover that they could adjust the transparency, or what?), it’s totally fine.

But then, yet again, the designer feels he hasn’t done enough – it’s just not quite “designy” enough to merit the work of a professional – so he rummages around in his stock grab bag and throws on this (translucent!) garbage that adds nothing. I hope Mr. Rafferty didn’t offer too much unneeded gratitude to the hack responsible for this.

Unless, that is, you happen to be releasing an album in the “Holiday” vein.  Not only is this prime time to be getting your seasonal, jolly musical goods out there, but every year about this time, your record will have its time in the sun once more.  (Of course the tradeoff is being ignored/irrelevant for 11 months out of the year, but that’s actually quite better odds than most non-seasonal independent releases get.)

Here are some new releases clamoring for your seasonal music dollar this holiday season.  I can’t tell you what they sound like, but I can certainly judge them by their covers, as I always do.

Aled Jones – Aled’s Christmas Gift

I was surprised, in these times of the alleged “War on Christmas,” to find that most of the new holiday-themed albums I was able to find were completely shameless in their Christmas-centrism.  Are the pro-Christmas forces just being more vigilant in getting their message, their “reason for the season,” out there?  Or could it be that this so-called “War” is overblown, or perhaps even nonexistent, and there are plenty of people, both Christly and non, who have no problem whatsoever with Christmas?  Nah, couldn’t be!

Perhaps this question is best pondered while listening to Aled Jones’s Christmas Gift to us all, a CD that definitely seems (based on its cover) intent on keeping the “Christ” in Christmas.  Our friend Aled is bathed in light, standing front and center in a giant church/cathedral-type building, flanked by a twinkling Christmas tree and some very Christian-looking candles.  If you weren’t looking carefully, you might think he was a casually-dressed priest, with his loosely-buttoned black shirt that might have held a starched white collar only moments before.  But no, Aled is (I assume) merely a nattily-dressed layperson, probably a classically trained tenor or baritone, who wants to share his love of the season (and, of course, its Reason) with us all, by way of a carefully selected mix of traditional Christmas favorites (think “O Holy Night,” not “Jingle Bells”) and maybe an inspirational original or two.

Black Snow 2 – The Completely Different Xmas Compilation

Some – perhaps even Aled Jones – might think of this as a volley from the “anti-Christmas” side of the War on Christmas – it does, after all, use the dreaded “Xmas” spelling – but I see it as more of a neutral to pro-Christmas statement.  It’s got Santa on the cover, after all, and despite the spelling, you know what holiday it’s about.  There’s no “Chrismakwanzakkah” gags or all-encompassing “holiday” references here; it’s straight-up “Xmas,” if a “completely different” version of Xmas.

Now as to what that “completely different” entails, I have to admit to being a bit stymied.  I think based on the title alone, I might have assumed this was a compilation of Christmas (or “Xmas”) music by African American artists, perhaps mostly in the rap/hip-hop genres.  (Which would be an awesome compilation I would love to own, by the by.)  The cover doesn’t really scream “hip-hop” to me, though.  The dirty, collaged, Urban Outfitters look of the cover and the main font force a re-examination of the title.  Perhaps this is kind of a gothy, Lite Industrial take on Christmas music?  Or instrumental electronic versions of holiday favorites?  I guess I don’t have any idea what we’re in for here, but this is probably a fun listen, and I think I’d take it over Aled’s Gift (sorry Aled).

Rita MacNeil and Frank Mills – The Spirit of Christmas

Rita and Frank have brought us, I’ll wager, another decidedly Christian take on the Christmas album, but this one appeals to me a bit more than Aled’s.  Maybe it’s the hominess of the cover – they’re not trying to impress you with their slick, churchy godliness, they’re just hanging out by the piano getting ready to sing a few tunes for you – but I just like these guys more than Aled.  They also seem like, while they’re definitely into the whole God thing, maybe they’re not so hung up on it that they can’t bust out a a “Frosty the Snowman” or “Blue Christmas” in between the more traditional, Christ-focused numbers.  Rita and Frank honestly just seem like a couple of nice folks who really like the holidays – sorry, Christmas – and want to share their music with everybody.  (Evangelists take note: if you’re trying to woo grumpy atheists, best to go with the cheerful, homespun angle rather than slick and earnest.)

Most of them aren’t kidding.  They just haven’t the slightest sense of irony, and, in the words of the Magicians’ Alliance, they demand to be taken seriously.  It usually doesn’t work.

Engel – Threnody

There are a lot of signifiers here that we’re dealing with the Way Too Serious genre: Vague band name that might be a reference to a philosopher or serious historical figure; album title that most anyone (particularly anyone into this band) will have to look up in the dictionary, and then probably forget the definition of within hours (double points for said title being a reference to the dead); highly stylized, logofied band name on the album cover (this will be a recurring theme in this column); and, of course, an angel with black eye makeup blowing a trumpet, superimposed over a stained glass window.

I imagine Engel to be somewhere in the heavy rock/metal spectrum of things.  Not much of  a leap there, I’m pretty sure anyone who’s ever heard music before would make the same assumption, and Engel is probably jockeying hard for that market of people who see an album cover and think “dude, that looks intense,” and then buy it.  There’s every possibility that this album is, in fact, per its title, a tribute of some sort to a person or persons who passed away, in which case it seems in poor taste to poke fun at its self-seriousness, but when your job is to write about things you don’t know about, you end up in these situations sometimes.  Even if this album is such a tribute, it seems to me that there could be a subtler, more tasteful way of going about this, regardless.  At least take the eye makeup off the angel, for goodness’ sake.

McFly – Shine a Light Pt. 1

It’s easy to poke fun at the metal dudes for their overblown earnestness, but they’re by no means the only or worst offenders: electro-pop-punk-alternative-90s-rock bands (or whatever McFly is) are just as easily susceptible.  McFly has a unique problem, though, in that the odds are they named themselves at a time when they were feeling perhaps a bit less like they needed to be taken seriously (“Hey, what’s that guy’s name from that one movie our parents like? ‘Hello, McFly!!’  Haha, that would be great!”), but as they have progressed in their career, they feel the need to compensate for their goofy band name with sober expressions, lens flare, and singles with titles like “Shine a Light Pt.1.”

It’s not an uncommon problem, this outgrowing of the band name (see, e.g., Hoobastank, The Beach Boys), and I understand a band not wanting to change its name once they have made an established name for themselves (I will give McFly the benefit of the doubt and assume they’ve established a name in one way or another), but seeing the shared family name of Michael J. Fox and Crispin Glover’s characters in one of the finer movies of my youth rendered in metallic, futuristic type and superimposed over a bunch of frowning doofuses is just sad.  Frankly, they look more like Biffs to me anyway.

Arjen Anthony Lucassen’s Star One – Victims of the Modern Age

Here are a few more clues someone is taking himself too seriously: Including his own name as a possessive at the beginning of his band (or “project,” as I’m sure he refers to Star One) name (extra sober points for including the middle name, and further bonus points for a Scandinavian name); making a reference to “the modern age” in a dark, foreboding sense; album artwork that is meant to be a comment on the perils of contemporary urban life, complete with faceless buildings, isolated people, and a huge explosion (ooh, and more lens flare!).

I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that Mr. Lucassen  has something important he needs to say about The Modern Age.  In fact, I’m guessing he pretty much said it all with this album cover and we don’t really need to go so far as to listen to the record, which is probably some very serious contemporary prog rock, with occasional flourishes of orchestral instrumentation,and an allegorical narrative that weaves throughout the songs and tells the tale of a pair of brave souls doing battle against the cruel modern age in which they live.  Or, you know, something like that.

Dwarr – Animals

Dwarr is certainly doing their best to scare us with this cover, for their album Animals (let me guess: Humans are the real animals!).  There’s a lot to take in here: Yeti-like hominids sacrificing and feasting on humans; a glowing cave with teeth-like stalactites and stalagmites; an angry, half-sunken Statue of Liberty (“You maniacs!!!”); crumbling buildings; and a scaly, sickly-looking sunset.  In the top right corner we have a He-Manesque heroic character with flowing mane, rippling muscles, ghostly Village of the Damned eyes, and a crucifix necklace, who is either going to save the world or be eaten by the man-eating Yetis.  Or shit, maybe he’s actually in charge of the Yetis, à la Saruman, and he’s exhorting them on in their man-eating ways?  Regardless, if the person who drew this cover is over 14 years old, I will be both very surprised and a little sad for them.  I mean, look at this guy!

I know nothing about Dwarr, of course, but I imagine this is a fairly typical, perhaps slightly Christian, metal album.  Nothing groundbreaking, but probably a perfectly fine soundtrack to one’s freshman year of high school.

Devilz Rejectz – House of the Dead

This is a fairly typical “scary” album cover, though if you look closely there’s nothing terribly scary about it.  It’s just a photo of a pretty nice-looking house shot from a low angle, with a few crows flying over it, which has been run through various photoshop filters to further spookify things.  What really tips you off that this is supposed to be scary is the tombstone with the band’s name embossed on it in glowing letters, and the Olde English-type font of the album title – not to mention, of course, the words “Devilz” and “Dead” in said band name and album title.  I would wager this particular band is probably part of the ICP clowniverse of horror-rap-rock . . . maybe something along the lines of Cypress Hill with a sprinkling of Gwar (not to be confused with Dwarr, of course).

The Fucking Wrath – Terra Fire

You know, if you’re going to name your band “The Fucking Wrath,” you should have some seriously intimidating artwork (you should also have the stones to write your band name on your album cover). This evil wizard encasing the earth in fire is obviously meant to be super-scary, but in my opinion he comes off as goofy as cartoonish.  (And not particularly evil; the beard and pipe call to mind no one so much as Gandalf – it’s only when you get to the skeletal fingertips shooting flame at the earth that you realize evil is afoot here.)  The smoke font the band’s initials are in is a nice touch – almost making up for the cop-out of using the initials – but the “Terra Fire” font, limned in yellow, ruins the mood completely for me.  I imagine their music to be along the same lines; trying its damnedest to be heavy and scary as shit, but fucking it up with self-seriousness and blazing yellow guitar solos.

Stromae – Cheese

Now this is how you do scary.  No broadcasting of one’s intentions via band name or album title, no warty wizards or man-eating manbeasts, just sans serif fonts and a gaunt, smiling man in a cardigan and bow tie on a white background.  Instantly I am reminded of the giant from Twin Peaks, and I am deeply unsettled.  This cover also doesn’t do much to tell us what sounds are within, but I’m guessing maybe some form of electronica, something dark and smart and well put-together, like this cover.

Timber Timbre – Timber Timbre

Here’s another subtly creepy cover that’s way more scary – at least to me – than the over-the-top efforts up above.  We have here an obviously manipulated image, with two photos collaged together along a vertical axis, featuring a grungy-looking dude in jeans and a flannel at the top of a set of stairs leaning against a tree, and then a seemingly tiny person in all black and a pointy witch hat down below him, looking off into the bushes.  I love the questions this brings up: Who are these people?  What is their relation to each other?  What are those stairs doing there?  Was there a house there once, or is the tree a house? (Maybe he’s a Keebler Elf?)  Is she a good witch or a bad witch?  I don’t know about you, but this cover has me spooked.  As to the music within, there’s a lot of directions these guys could be going: garagey, trashy, low-fi rock; Jandekian (Jandeky? Jandesque?) acoustic dirges; expansive, cinematic instrumental rock . . . I don’t think I’m going to put my money on any particular genre, but the cover certainly intrigues me enough to want to investigate further.

But there are still plenty of people putting themselves out there, their full names and their own likenesses on their album covers, using subtle (and not-so-subtle) graphic and photographic cues to clue us in as to the sounds that might be waiting for us within.

Natasha Borzilova – Balancing Act
Something about this album cover makes me think this is an instrumental record of original compositions, and that Natasha here is a kickass acoustic guitar player.  I don’t know whether it’s the exotic name (I know we shouldn’t let people’s given names influence our guess as to what their music is like, but sometimes it’s hard not to); or the way the guitar is so prominently featured, with the artist seemingly in the middle of dancing with her axe; or just the general austere, modern look of the design, but that’s my gut feeling.  Or maybe it’s just your standard-issue Earnest Acoustic Pop, but only a quick visit to any number of digital music purveyors will tell.

Taylor Eigsti – Daylight at Midnight
Again, my gut is telling me this is not a straight-up singer-songwriter project.  Of course I’m letting the name influence me yet again, but it’s not just that.  The stark, modernist font, the abstract, painterly imagery in the background, the shameless foregrounding of the image of the artist . . . I don’t know exactly why, but it makes me think this is a contemporary classical, or experimental new music project.  Whatever it is, it’s a decent cover.  I cannot imagine allowing my own face to be featured so prominently on an album cover, but the other elements incorporated here make it work for me.

Sully Erna – Avalon
This one has me a bit befuddled.  The guy’s pose and the sepia tone suggest an earnest, heartfelt crooner, but his soulpatch and tattoos, combined with the tattoo-style graphics busily filling up every square inch of the cover, say “I am a rocker.”  So maybe this Sully fellow is an ex-member of a heavy rock-type band, and this is his solo debut?  If so, then this album – as horribly ugly as it is – is a pretty brilliant synthesis of all of that information.  Here he is, saying “I am a rocker.  There was a time when I would have rocked you, and maybe soon I will rock you again, but for now I have some sensitive things to say.  Now where’s my acoustic guitar?”

Nona Hendryx – Nona
There are times (see also Mel Tillis below) when it is really, really hard not to investigate these artists once I’ve seen their album covers.  Nona Hendryx seems to be gunning (or perhaps knifing) for the title of heir to the throne of Grace Jones, and it’s about time someone did.  (Of course, it’s entirely possible Nona’s been around for ages and I’ve just totally missed out, in which case I apologize for my ignorance.  I assure you I will remedy it as soon as I’m done writing this.)  Not that the incredible and intimidating Ms. Jones isn’t still around and doing her thing (she released her first album in nearly twenty years in 2008, which I’m going to go listen to right now), but I just really want to see her mix it up with somebody, and Nona here seems like the perfect candidate, what with her playful grin and giant knife.

Jane Monheit – Home
Isn’t it great when you can get the album cover and the Crate and Barrel catalog shoot done all in one go?  This cover is so bland that Jane could be doing almost anything, music-wise.  Well, anything that wouldn’t scare off any subscribers to Martha Stewart Living, anyway.  Solo piano?  Harp?  More acoustic folk-rock?  Whatever it is, I don’t think I want any.

Mel Tillis – You Ain’t Gonna Believe This . . .
Maybe it’s just his obvious advanced age, or maybe his name is ringing a bell somewhere in my mind, but I feel like I should know who Mel Tillis is.  Based on his jocular grin, the “this is the beginning of a funny story” album title, and the general goofy air of the album cover (I have zoomed in as far as possible on that weird donkey thing in the background, and I still have no idea what the heck it is), I’m going to go ahead and say this is probably a comedy album, and probably not one I want to listen to.

Rhonda Vincent – Taken
Isn’t it great when you can get the album cover and the Cosmo cover shoot done all in one go?  I’m gonna go ahead and say this is an album of moderately sassy adult contemporary nu-country.  As with so many covers I look at for this column, it is doing its job of telling me to stay the hell away from this record.

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.

And so I’ve decided that at least for this month I will not engage in my usual snarky takedowns of terrible album covers, hilarious as they might be.  I will take the high road, and pick out some good covers from the batch of recent releases to share with you.

The Like – Release Me

The thing that all of the covers I will discuss in this month’s column have in common is that once I saw them, it was very hard to keep from looking into the albums, reading reviews or descriptions, or trying to find a sample to listen to.  This is exactly what album covers should be doing – drawing you in, making you want to learn or hear more – and exactly what most of them fail spectacularly at.

The Like’s cover for Release Me is a great example.  It’s executed in a perfectly retro style, evoking in general the LPs of the mid-60s, without calling to mind a specific one (at least to me).  Not only is it well designed (the fonts, the colors, the way they call out certain song titles, and the “stereo” icon are all just right), but the photography is perfect, and they actually got someone to make them these adorable little mod dresses that spell out the band name.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the band seems to consist of four very lovely ladies.  All that said, you still don’t really know what you’re going to get from this record: It could be straight-up 60s girl pop, sure (and I’d be kind of disappointed if it were, as that would make the whole thing just a bit too on the nose).  But it could also be bratty punk rock, or fuzzed-out psychedelia, or pretty much anything.  Point being, if I were in a record store, or if lala.com still existed (let me take a moment here to say Dear Steve Jobs, I hate you), I would absolutely put this on to find out.  Mission accomplished!

If I may make one little critique, though: As fine as almost every element of the cover is, I do find the ladies’ gestures to be a bit off.  I know the question of what to do with one’s hands in a picture is always hard (especially for people used to holding and playing instruments with those very hands), but I do think they have found the three or four best answers to the question of what not to do with one’s hands.  “K” seems to be doing all right, keeping it simple and understated, but the rest of them are just mystifying.  At first I think maybe they’re trying to communicate something?  Semaphore, a la The Beatles’ Help?  I don’t know, but it disturbs the otherwise brilliant composition of this cover.

Punch Brothers – Antifogmatic

Yet again, here is a band about whom I know nothing, with an album cover that makes me want to learn more.  The band name, font choices, and neologistic album title have me leaning somewhere in the direction of classic-rockish jam band, but that’s really just a gut feeling.

What we have here is kind of the holy grail of album art: an actual original piece of art – in this case a drawing – that would work almost as well hanging on your wall as it does in this context.  This surreal little piece, involving some kind of Rube Goldberg chemistry kit with a half-submerged human face being boiled by a bunsen burner, floating in the fog, ties in really nicely with the album title, without hitting you over the head with it.  I wish I had the CD cover (or, even better, the vinyl) in front of me, as this seems like the kind of artwork that holds a lot of little details and would reward a more detailed viewing than a Jpeg can really provide.

Gurrumul – Gurrumul

OK, I’m totally sold.  After looking at this cover, I don’t just want to know more about Gurrumul – Who is Gurrumul?  What is Gurrumul? Is it the guy on the cover?  Where is he from?  What does he do? – I want to buy this album.  I’m pretty sure Gurrumul is the guy on the cover, and I’m pretty sure whatever he does kicks ass.  This photo is gorgeous and rich, and the guy’s soul just oozes out of the image.

Again, one tiny nitpick, though: I think the edgy, distressed font choice is a bit over the top and unnecessary.  If anything, it should be a small, understated typeface – maybe even in white, rather than gold – but really, I don’t think there should be any type at all on the cover.  This guy’s face, captured by this photographer, will sell the record all on its own.  Once we’ve been pulled in by the image, we can scroll down or look at the spine to learn more.

The program Photoshop is an incredibly useful tool that has forever changed the way designers work – from professionals at the highest level to whoever Christian Scott paid in 40s.  The endless options it gives you, and the ease with which it allows you to manipulate images, play with text, fonts, formatting – every element of the design process – would probably have given Saul Bass a heart attack.  But with great computing power comes great responsibility – that is, the responsibility to exercise a modicum of restraint and not let the computer do the designing for you.  But as of yet Adobe has not instituted any kind of prerequisites for purchasers of this software, so anyone that can scrape together a couple hundred bucks can have this power at their disposal.  Many of them, I’m sure, start with the best of intentions, but the road to hell, as we all know, is paved with good intentions and Photoshop filters.

As with so many albums I come across, this one seems like it perfectly communicates what kind of music is contained within, but probably not in the way the band intended.  From the band name to the album title to the swooshy time-lapse lights (Is it just me, or was that the album art thing of 2009?  Did people just figure out how to do that or something?), to the mussed-just-so hair, to the cool sans-serif fonts, to the blown-out graphics, this record screams “bland rock that desperately wishes it were interesting.”

I can hear the interview now: “So, where did you guys get your band name?”  “Well, we had a practice space over on Tenth Avenue North, and we thought . . . that sounds cool!”  (To be fair, yes, I had a band once that was named after the house we practiced in.  It was a better name, though, I promise.)  “And the album title?”  “Well, a lot of our lyrics deal with light and dark, you know?  Like, love and pain, and good and bad, that sorta thing.  So I wanted the title to talk about that place where the light and dark come together.”

You know, there’s nothing wrong with going out to the park and taking a photo of your band standing around looking at the camera (ooh, but that other guy is looking to the right!).  No one’s going to look at your album cover and think “wow, they must not have Photoshop; what a boring cover.” This seems to be a case where if the designer had stopped just a few mouse clicks back, it might have been acceptable – or at least not physically painful to look at for more than a few seconds.   But no, they just had to go run that last filter to tie everything together.

Jennifer Knapp’s Letting Go is, compared to Tenth Avenue North’s album cover, positively restrained.  It’s just a picture of flailing girl and a few words.  And yet, does the desaturation/color replacement here really achieve anything?  Is there any reason this couldn’t just be a tastefully color-balanced – or even fully black and white – photo of Ms. Knapp on a white background?  Instead of seeing a pleasant-looking woman in a state of (I assume) rock-induced bliss, we see the hand of the Photoshopper, thinking “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if she was black and white, but her jeans were bright blue and her shirt was sort of pee-yellow?”  No, sir, it would not.  Undo.

When the cover of Blake Lewis’s Audio Day Dream was made public, pretty much everyone on the planet thought “Jesus Christ, what the hell were they smoking?”  Kaskade’s design team, however, apparently took it as some kind of challenge: who can design the goofiest, most ludicrous album art, and convince the artist in question that it is totally badass?  Well, this round goes to whoever put together this monstrosity.

Say what you will about Cocorosie (and there’s plenty I could say), at least they’re in on the gag.  Poor Blake and Kaskade are just pawns (sober, serious-eyed pawns) in an evil game between ingeniously terrible designers.  Only a genius could have come up with this insanely garish hodge-podge, managing to nod to the awfulness that is Audio Day Dream (crazy colors! serious dude! space!!!) while making it look like The White Album in comparison.

The designers of this particular abomination have absolutely earned the Evil Design Genius of the Day award.  As The Devil Makes Three (via Sean Jones) say, “If you’re gonna do wrong, buddy, do wrong right.”  I look forward to seeing how Lewis’s team responds.

Jason Castro – s/t

It’s hard to say what about this album cover turns me off so completely.  Is it the dreads?  (Really, dude, floating in that pool the top of your head looks like something I pulled out of the shower drain earlier.)  The self-satisfied smirk?  The fine gold chain?  No, you know what?  For the most part this album cover is, objectively, not bad.  The photo is well composed, the color is great (The blue of the pool!  Those dreamy blue eyes!) – if you weren’t a judgmental dick like me, you wouldn’t leap right to making assumptions about the kind of person who would allow this album cover to be released with this photo of him on it, and you’d just think “Hm, nice photo.  Dreamy eyes.”

But!  Here’s the thing that makes this album terrible.

Those ‘o’s.  Those horrid ‘o’s in the stupid little green and blue boxes.  I ask you, what is the point of those awful ‘o’s?  Those ‘o’s are what Starbucks would use to communicate the fact that they’re really not like all the other international mega-corporations out there, they’re quirky and fun-loving, and have you tried their carbon-roasted Costa Rican?  But we don’t need a font to tell us this guy is an individual, a non-conformist: He’s floating in a pool, with a beatific smile and a head full of dreads; obviously he’s the free and easy type.  So again, what is the point of these ridiculous ‘o’s?  They’re just hammering home a point that is made within the first .05 seconds of viewing this photo.  Please, designers, can we have a bit more restraint with our fonts?

Straight No Chaser – With a Twist

So, there’s this band . . . I think they’re kinda jazzy?  (They’re named after a Monk tune, anyway.)  And there are eight of them. (Or are there any multiples in there?  Honestly, I can’t be bothered to figure it out.  They all look like the same person, even the black guy.)  And they’re just hanging out in these multi-colored pastel squares, chillin’ out, hands in pockets, or slightly swaying, and laughing, and having a grand old time, and OH MY GOD WHY WOULD ANYONE LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM WHEN JUST LOOKING AT THIS GIANT PILE OF JACKASS MAKES ME WANT TO PREEMPTIVELY JAM ICEPICKS IN MY EARS?????

All right, let me step back for a minute.  Sorry.

The interesting thing about this cover is that its problem is sort of the opposite of Jason Castro’s: The design – and even the font choices – is just fine.  The colors could be a little more interesting, but there’s nothing offensive about it.  Some fields of color, tied together with a black frame and a couple of tastefully chosen fonts.  But for some reason the band – or the designer, or the label, or someone’s blind friend – decided that what really needed to happen was for the band to cavort around in front of a green screen like frat boys crashing a wedding, and then for each of them to be on the cover, floating in their own little color-pods.  I would like to argue, however, that not only do these pictures not make the album cover better, they take the album cover from pleasant if somewhat boring to COMPLETELY SOUL-CRUSHINGLY AWFUL in one fell swoop.  In fact, if they could go back in time and take themselves out of the artwork, I’m pretty sure this would make the album approximately 25 billion times better.

Don’t believe me?  OK, here we are, then:

Straight No Chaser, I have just improved your album immeasurably.  You’re welcome.  I’ll send my bill to your label.

Here’s the thing, though.  I can pretty much guarantee, based on the original version of this album cover, that this particular record is a terrible, godawful piece of crap that I would never in my life want to subject my ears to.  The edited version manages to mask this fact; if I saw it somewhere, I might give a brief listen just to hear what this band that had the audacity to name itself after a piece of music by the genius Thelonius Monk might be all about.  The art as it stands, however, has saved me the experience, so I guess I should thank the designer for revealing this band of posturing dicks for what they are.

Christian Scott – Sexy Magic Ride

Just to take us out on a light note, I had to share this with you.  There’s a young trumpet player named Christian Scott who’s been making waves lately.  I read a great interview with him where he verbally knocked around Wynton Marsalis for a while, which always makes me happy.  After reading him talk shit for a while, I figured I should hear his music, so I did what I pretty much always do in this situation and looked for him on lala.com.  I saw and listened to some of the albums mentioned in the article (which are fantastic, by the way), but then I found others with titles like Yo Let’s Party, Pump That Bass, and, of course, Sexy Magic Ride.  At first I just thought “wow, this Scott fellow really is an iconoclast.”  But on further examination it was revealed that the music world boasts two very different Christian Scotts – one of whom makes ground-breaking music jumping off from jazz roots, and one of whom makes (I’m assuming) moronic, simple-minded dance music for jerks.  He also, I would wager, has a friend with Photoshop who’s really into doing design and stuff, and has a vast library of clip art and shitty fonts.  There are a bunch of covers to choose from (he does a lot of singles), but this one, from the ludicrous title to the dancing musical notation to the glittering disco ball to the tough-guy-with-baseball-hat-under-a-bridge photo, pretty much has it all.

Demon Hunter – World Is a Thorn

OK, technically I shouldn’t know the artist or album title for this one, as they are not on the cover. But the way I find these covers, that would have been almost impossible to avoid. If you can think of a way for me to find the cover images of new albums without getting the artist/album title info, let me know. I’m into being a purist if at all possible.

But for now, I’ll cheat. Which means that I know this band is called Demon Hunter, and their album is titled World Is a Thorn, which tells you a lot right there. This music will involve large amounts of thick, distorted guitars, guttural and/or screaming vocals, and either breakneck-fast, virtuosic riffage or slow, punishing dirges. (I’m leaning toward breakneck, but I wanted to leave open the possibility of a slower, doomier band.)

And, lo and behold, this album art fits right in with the band name and title, completing the image of their sound. The cover image is a straightforward rendering of a fantastical Gothic cathedral with a huge dragon’s head front and center, flanked by a couple of somewhat phallic gargoyles. The color palette is a very muted sepia, and the tone is very serious and unironic. The he opposite of, say, Goblin Cock’s legendary debut album cover, which like this one was heavily steeped in Dungeons & Dragons geek lore, but was also heavily steeped in irony. This piece has the air of having been drawn on the back of a soon-to-be-failed math test by a longhaired stoner kid with some serious art chops and antisocial tendencies.

If I were to actually listen to this band (and so far I haven’t listened to anything I’ve written about in this column, aside from a few ill-advised seconds attempting to endure Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok”), I would prepare myself for a very loud, very intense band with no sense of humor at all.

Daniel O’Donnell – Early Memories
This one could actually be any number of things: Motivational book on tape; deadpan satire of motivational book on tape (I’m pretty sure this is 100% sincere, but I do get a bit of a Stuart Smalley vibe, so I wanted to leave the option on the table); audio book of essays about, um, early memories; soothing new age jazz; solo flute meditations (the flute could be of either the western concert or pan variety); cloying Irish folk songs . . . really, the mind reels.

But again, for any of these options, this album cover is absolutely perfect, and I would wager a lot of money that whatever is on this album, it’s absolutely fitting for the album cover. I mean, you’re not going to throw this on and hear some hardcore honky-tonk, or rap, or afropop-infused indie rock (or, let’s be frank, anything with a strong beat at all). Daniel O’Donnell, like Demon Hunter, is nothing if not earnest, and I’m sure he took the design of his album cover as seriously as they did theirs. The smile: inviting and slightly playful, but not goofy. The view: generically lovely, sparkling, tranquil. The fonts: classic, classy, strong but not overbearing. The sweater: blends in perfectly with the sky and sea to offset the artist’s smiling face, ready and waiting to share his early memories with you, whatever form they might take.

This album’s art is also perfectly appropriate for the album’s intended audience, which as anyone could see is late middle-aged ladies with a certain amount of disposable income who like to have music on in the background while they read their historical romance novels or books about how to achieve their soul’s full potential, or maybe just sit and gaze at the dreamcatchers and crystals hanging through their window and dream of sparkling waters and periwinkle sweaters.

Gary Allan – Get off on the Pain
OK, you knew the lovefest couldn’t last, right? I saw this horrendous abortion of an album cover scrolling by, and I knew I had to expose it to the light of day. There is so much wrongness going on here that it’s hard to know where to begin.

Let’s start with the title: “Get off on the Pain”? Really? Mix that in with the random generic-tattoo style photoshop filler graphics, the weathered spraypaint stencil font, and the image of the artist himself: sculpted hair, grizzled face, tattooed, wearing artfully ripped and goth-bedazzled jeans (what, did he write all over them in Sharpie during a long meeting with his publicist?), and I guess this art is pretty appropriate for what the album likely contains as well. Is there any chance a record with art this shitty and a title this groan-inducing, prominently featuring a douchebag of such monumental proportions (I had to cheat and do a little research to determine that the featured tattoo is of a skeleton in a cowboy hat holding a pair of green dice, flanked by a rose on barbed wire — ’nuff said) could be anything but a steaming shit sandwich?

I guess we all owe Gary’s graphic designer some thanks for so blatantly telegraphing the quality of this album to us all, lest we mistakenly purchase or download or otherwise accidentally listen to it, and never recover. I’m not taking the chance.