A few months ago I wrote a piece about some of my favorite album covers and the artists behind them. I enjoyed it so much that I've decided to do it again. This month I've taken artwork from The Radio Dept., Slareffenland, Kings of Convenience, Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear. You can catch part one here.
Elin Almered created the beautiful painting that sits on the front cover of The Radio Dept.'s debut album. Elin was one of the founding members of the band back in 1995 but only stayed with them until 2003. I'd love to see more of her work but unfortunately this painting is the only thing I can find. She currently records under the the name Little Death.
The Sunshine EP by Slaraffenland is another case of a band member providing the artwork for their music. Slaraffenland even went one further with Sunshine being hand-folded by the band themselves. They're beautifully designed by Niklas Antonson of the band and I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of the CD at their gig last month, while my girlfriend now sports a rather fantastic t-shirt featuring Niklas' design.
Two photographers have contributed work to the latest Kings of Convenience album: Åse Holte and Danielle Rubi. I've decided to blog about them in the blog below (click here to read about Åse and here for Danielle). Danielle provided the wonderful image of Mexico fom the cover while Åse has taken some realy nice shots of Norway inside the sleeve.
It seems so fitting that Fleet Foxes would turn to a 16th Century Netherlandish Renaissance painter to provide the artwork for their debut album. Their baroque pop folk sound feels like something from another time and the painting by Pieter Brugel the Elder pushes that on. The painting is called Netherlandish Proverbs and depicts about 100 literal renditions of Flemish proverbs from the day. Frontman Robin Pecknold told Mojo back in August how the artwork ended up on the albums cover:
We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do, and my brother had been working out some stuff, when I saw that Bruegel painting in a book my girlfriend had. I liked that it had a really intriguing meaning, like there's a story to each little scene. Which I just felt fitting for that record- dense but unified, not a collage or anything. And I liked its Where's Waldo? quality, that it was something you could look at for a long time on a vinyl sleeve and find new little things. It was very easy to get the museum in Berlin that has it to say yes. They were super excited a band wanted to use it and put it in their newsletter.If you're interested in either the original painting or Flemish proverbs Wikipedia have a terrific breakdown of the image showing a large collection of many of the idioms hidden in the picture.
This is the second time I've chosen an album cover by Grizzly Bear after writing about Veckatimest in my previous Take 5 post. The photo for Yellow House was taken by Polish born and American based photographer Patryce Bak. I've blogged about some of her work here. The photos are of Yellow House, the house in which the album was recorded and for those interested it's Edward Droste's mom's house. I love how the album is full of Patryce's photos and each page of the sleeve is filled with a delicate collection of the empty rooms inside the house. The album is also really well designed by Ben Tousley. Here's a photo that shows off some of his terrific packaging.
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Got a personal favourite album cover? Why not share it in the comments?
