Album Art

So you wander into some record store (and if you're me, it's probably either Smash! or Crooked Beat (partially because that's really all there is in DC, and partially because the two are both pretty awesome and right next door to each other) and you're just lookin around. Probably browsin' through the vast quantities of used records, "organised" alphabetically (questionably), and tryin' to find something good. You're flippin' through them pretty quickly, because there are just so many, so how do you know if you see something good? The album art. And that's what this post is about.

Mainly though, it's just some of my favorite album covers with maybe a lil' blurb about them (it's not as if I could analyse them or anything).

First up is Beirut's debut album Gulag Orkestar
This is just such a great photo, and probably one of my fave covers. It really fits the sound of the music, and, at least according to the liner notes, Zach Condon found them ripped out of a book in a library in Leipzig.
Then we have Beat Happening's Beat Happening. Twee as fuck. That's really all you need
Hi, How Are You? by Daniel Johnston. iconic and amazing. When he used to work at McDonald's he would just randomly put tapes into people's bags. lucky folks, most probably hated them unfortunately.
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven - Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Like the album, it's simply amazing. I am super psyched to finally be able to see them live. They have a history of pretty sweet album art. Their album Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada has a really interesting cover too, all it has on it are the hebrew characters for "chaos". It doesn't even mention the band, or anything else, anywhere on it.


Joy Division's Unkown Pleasures. A graphic of successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered.
(a blurb should not be necessary here)
Loveless - My Bloody Valentine. It just captures the feeling and the sound of the album perfectly.Sonic Youth's first album after "selling out". Sweet cover by Raymond Pettibon

That's it (for now at least) but my stopping is really just a matter of space. There are soso many great ones out there.

-Alec