Judging a Cover By Its Cover: Built To Spill “Keep It Like A Secret”

March 26, 2008 by John Foster  Send to a Friend

John Foster takes music packaging very seriously. He has deconstructed the design of the recording industry through his personal work and his books, Maximum Page Design (HOW), New Masters of Poster Design (Rockport) and the upcoming For Sale: Innovative Solutions in Packaging Design (HOW) as well as a monograph of Sub Pop’s Art Director, Jeff Kleinsmith, slated for publication by the label in 2008.

He will be poking and prodding various albums on a weekly basis so please be sure to keep an eye out!

This week’s victims:

Built To Spill “Keep It Like A Secret”

Is it worth listening to no matter what it looks like? When the great run on indie rock giants to the major labels had come to a trickle, one group made the leap finally for all the right reasons and the payoff was evident from the first notes of their Warner Bros debut “Perfect From Now On.” However, Doug Martsch’s habit of changing band line-ups for Built To Spill did little to tighten the focus on his twisting, and at times dense guitar rock. Solidifying the trio with Brett Nelson and Scott Plouf back on board, he was soon to make his best album. Ditching the meandering aspects of his playing for a focus on using the studio (and the label’s moolah) to its fullest to produce a record that brings the pop aspects to the forefront, without losing all the joys that made the band so interesting in the first place.

Surrounded by a crystal clear sonic backing, his thin vocals morph into a strong suit for once - and his melodies and lyrics keep pace with his fretboard gymnastics. Leading off with “The Plan” and its dive bombing riffs, bashed drums and chiming melodies and rushing off into the insanely tight swirl of “Center of the Universe,” you really appreciate having Plouf at the drumkit. Each subsequent track holds up to the high standard set for them culminating in “You Were Right” and its collage of rock and roll cliché lyrics. It would be Martsch’s way of tipping his hat to the past while breaking free into a refreshing sonic future. His songwriting too intricate to create exact imitators you can still hear the meandering melodic sensibilities entrenched by Martsch and Pavement in so many bands today.

Credit: “Art Direction and Design by Tae Won Yu, Photographs by Tae Won Yu and Jeff Smith ”

Any signs of creative interference in the design process by the artist? No but Tae was very close with many in the Olympia scene.

Does the look fit the sound? Using simple and rough collage techniques with perfect choices of color, Tae creates the ultimate version of his design work up to that moment. The pigtailed, Xeroxed covergirl is turned so that you can not see but the tiniest hint of her face. It’s a level of subtlety playing off the title that is all the more powerful attached to such an immediate and engaging cover. When you turned to the back and see the distorted wings taking up the bulk of the space with the tracklisting clear but relegated to the top with a suspended bouncy horse photo and the UPC actually accounted for in the design (attention to detail!) you know you are in for something bracingly creative and well crafted. There is nothing better than popping the disc in and finding out that you were right.

The only misstep is using a cluttered band rehearsal room photo as the first thing that you see on the booklet back when the remaining pages have so much to offer. The delicate touch evident in allowing the silver of the disc to make another band of circular color and then finding the rough target beneath it only serves to cinch the deal when you note it is the “o” in “To” on the cover. Despite the cynicism on the opening track, for Built To Spill, the “plan” would finally bring about amazing sonic success.

Final score (out of 10): 9.0 design (9.0 for the music)

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