Album cover art may be in transition, but it's far from dead.
There has always been an intimate connection between music and the art on its cover. Album art, a long-celebrated vehicle for visual and musical artists, has changed dramatically over the past three decades as its canvas has shrunk. But, with apologies to Mark Twain, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.
Album art traditionalists look on today in revulsion as their children see the artwork for the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs, roughly on the miniscreens of their iPods.
"It's just sad, because the visual side of music always has had such an influence on the way you hear a record," said Geremy Jasper, lead singer for punk band the Fever, who maintains a special relationship with the cover to Tom Waits' Rain Dogs.
"The way a record looks should influence and direct and contextualize the way you listen to a record. They work hand in glove, and that seems to be gone," he said.
The magic of album art isn't gone so much as it is hard to see -- without glasses, at least. There's as much creativity and beauty in cover art today as there was in the 1970s -- maybe more. But through the glare of a jewel case or the scratches on an iPod screen, it doesn't look nearly as majestic as it once did.
"As someone who feels that pop music is an art, I think that the pac-kaging for the music itself should be artistic," said Josh Rosenfeld, co-founder of Seattle indie label Barsuk Records, home to Death Cab For Cutie, Nada Surf and Rocky Votolato.
"It's the Luddite in me, in a way. I still like stuff. When I was younger, I was a total record-collector geek, and the objects had meaning, in a way, and it's hard to tell whether it's some weird materialistic, unflattering human impulse to collect [stuff] that I was excited about or the love for the music that was imbuing the packaging with added significance."
It was one thing for a cover's real estate to be downsized by more than 75 percent from a square LP cover to CD. At least it was still tangible -- a physical product you could hold in your hands and enjoy in different ways. From booklets to poster foldouts, bands and labels often got creative with the packaging.
But now, as iTunes scrambles to create a legitimate, compatible, interesting way of presenting cover art (and liner notes, lyrics and everything else that have been mainstays in recorded music since the 1950s), industry insiders are contemplating this transition to an all-digital medium that doesn't involve printing presses or record stores.
"Right now our albums are just a bunch of text on these iPods, which is a heartbreak," said the Fever's Jasper, who also created the cover art for its upcoming CD In the City of Sleep.
"It seems ridiculous -- really, really ridiculous. But it's kind of where American pop culture and society are going. Anything that's handmade or aesthetically interesting is thrown out, tossed out the window."
Whether fans are seeing a band's cover art for the first time on an LP sleeve or an iPod screen, at least manufacturers such as Apple and art-integrating software gurus CoverBuddy are keeping the art involved and linked to the music.
"I think it's awesome that the people who are making digital music players are concerned enough with album art to make that a possibility," said Sub Pop's Kleinsmith, speaking of the iPod's on-screen mini-art. "It's silly that you're seeing this little inch-by-inch thing, but you're still connecting the music with the art."
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