Posts tagged ‘cover’
The Hold Steady’s “Heaven is Whenever” Cover Art: Simple But Beautiful
http://www.flickr.com/photos/feinsteinbandpics/ / CC BY 2.0
In today’s age of digital downloads and evaporating record sales, everything we know about the album is going by the wayside.
Track order used to be a daunting and precise task, CD booklets offered as much in the way of supplementary entertainment as the band desired to eager fans, and album covers were often the iconic image associated with classic collections of music. Case in point: who can’t think of Dark Side of the Moon without picturing that rainbow-crossed prism with the black background?
While Brooklyn-based rockers The Hold Steady may be known much more for their riff-heavy classic rock stylings and frontman Craig Finn’s massively dense lyrical tales, they know how to convey thoughts about their albums through the covers. Their last release, 2008′s highly acclaimed (they’ve actually been highly acclaimed since their debut) Stay Positive, presented a rough, brown, dirty image of a small, dumpy, and utterly soulless town that Finn sang about on tracks like “Constructive Summer” and “Sequestered in Memphis.”
The cover art for their latest album, Heaven is Whenever (due in stores May 4) is probably the simplest album cover they’ve released to date, and perhaps their most powerful. The titles are in text that is decorated only slightly, giving us a clear indication of who we’re getting into, and reaching for the text is the hand of a young boy or girl.
Lead guitarist Tad Kubler described the music of Heaven is Whenever in a press release announcing the album as “evocative,” adding that “There’s a lot more melody. It’s more sonically diverse and dynamically expansive than any of our previous records.”
Finn described his lyrics as being about “embracing suffering and understanding its place in a joyful life.” He explained the significance of the album’s title as referencing “the way that love can help us rise above our modern struggles.” Man does that guy ever know how to express himself!
With dozens of tour dates already lined up, appearances scheduled at several summer festivals such as Lollapalooza and the Isle of Wight Festival, and an as-of-this-writing opening between May 30 and June 12, I am hoping as a Bonnaroo ticket holder that The Hold Steady will be added to the four-day Manchester, Tenn. festival as a second-tier headliner.
MGMT Release “Flash Delirium,” the First Track From New Album, “Congratulations”
Those wondering whether Brooklyn-based pop duo MGMT will follow the success of smash singles like “Kids” and “Time to Pretend” with another album like debut LP Oracular Spectacular- one full of danceable beats, thick bass grooves, and hummable hooks- will be floored when they hear “Flash Delirium,” the first “single” from sophomore album Congratulations to be released to the public through the group’s website.
“Flash Delirium” is far, far away from the pop sensibilities of MGMT’s most popular tracks. It’s a shape-shifting, chorus-less, homage-laden psych-rock odyssey- or should I say “oddity?” The song is a little over four minutes long but features at least seven distinct parts. Don’t bother asking me every single form of music that MGMT is referencing here- Pitchfork Media took care of that for us.
Here’s a video of the entire track, complete with the lyrics, which when described as “cryptic” or “bizarre” would be an understatement.
From the outset, MGMT have made it apparent that they were not interested in presenting Congratulations as a collection of three pop singles surrounded by forgettable filler material. Co-member Ben Goldwasser told New Musical Express last month:
“There definitely isn’t a ‘Time To Pretend’ or a ‘Kids’ on the album. We’ve been talking about ways to make sure people hear the album as an album in order and not just figure out what are the best three tracks, download those and not listen to the rest of it.”
Instead, Goldwasser and other permanent member Andrew VanWyngarden have crafted an album that they described to NME as “nine individual musical tours de force sequenced to flow with sonic and thematic coherence.” It’s clearly an attempt to counteract the current music trend of disregarding albums as complete works and only downloading the tracks one deems worthy of a spot in his or her music library, which I admire.
The cover art for MGMT's "Congratulations."
The very idea of an album as a complete work has pretty much gone by the wayside in today’s world of MP3s and digital downloads. Fans no longer need to go buy the entire album in CD form and hear it from start to finish to determine their favorite tracks. Individual songs can be downloaded and the rest can be ignored entirely.
It used to almost be a science determining the order of songs on an album. When vinyl was still on top, the major concern was which song opened side one and side two, respectively, and the same general structure applied to CDs. The digital age has all but destroyed the concept, but it’s refreshing to see a forward-thinking group like MGMT keeping it alive.
Green Day tried reinforcing the same idea with their latest album, 21st Century Breakdown, but still couldn’t resist releasing standout singles like “21 Guns” and “Know Your Enemy.” MGMT have gone the complete opposite direction, and instead have created a free-form musical journey through American’s psychedelic roots. Congratulations officially hits stores April 13.
