Posted at 10:46 PM (0 comments)
Recently there’s been quite a lot of discussion about Hard-Fi, or more specifically their new album’s cover art – or lack of it. Quite exactly why this is noteworthy is questionable, but then again I’m talking about it here so it must be vaguely relevant. Either that or I’m obsessed with pointless discussions about what is in the end is a picture on a box.
This is what’s been causing all the trouble. The band themselves have stated that it’s supposed to be a way of avoiding the cliché of black and white photos of the band plastered all over it – which is understandable if you look at Razorlight’s and the Kaiser Chiefs‘ artwork offerings – as well as being a comment on the growing irrelevance of album art in the iPod age, as explained here.
There’s been a load of criticism of it – it’s derivative, it’s lazy, it’s pretentious, it’s ugly, and even that it doesn’t go far enough, and the fact that there’s even a colour and a font suggest that this is very much cover art and all it entails – a publicity stunt designed to convince a few more people to buy the album, and the complete opposite of what the band have been claiming.
Despite this though, I’m still not convinced that the cover is “bad”. It’s not “good” in the same sense as something like Dark Side Of The Moon etc, but that’s not really it’s point, and while you may not approve of the art itself, it’s hard to argue against the message – that album art is nowhere near as notable as it once was, and certainly not as iconic. I think it’s interesting that album art has only become notable again now that a band has threatened not to use any.
Perhaps it’s me being an idiot and liking the simple design and the commentary (and the fact that it’s the sort of thing I’d do if I had an album), but I like it. Admittedly that doesn’t make it good, but it doesn’t make it bad either. And I smile every time I see the single cover, because, ultimately, it’s the truth, isn’t it?