Judging a Cover By Its Cover: Prefab Sprout “Steve McQueen” re-issue

March 5, 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:

Prefab Sprout “Steve McQueen” (2007 re-mastered edition)

Is it worth listening to no matter what it looks like? It might not be entirely untrue to say that I have been waiting for this album for nearly 20 years (having discovered the original record, well… cassette… three years after the initial release.) By that time, the estate of Steve McQueen had stepped in and forced the band to release it as “Two Wheels Good” in the U.S. It’s a shame as I think songwriter Paddy McAloon could have convinced the man, if alive, that he chose the title because McQueen, “was really good in an un-arty way. He was never hyped up,” much in the way McAloon presented his mini-masterpieces free of pretension. This being thee band’s second album, Paddy famously handed over his pile of demo’d songs written on his acoustic to Thomas Dolby who then brought the group into the studio and became the de-facto fifth member (much like Brian Eno with Talking Heads early on.)

The results were a classic. Masterfully crafted, the album became required listening for British college students. Unfortunately it never seemed to eclipse cult status on these shores – an affliction that would continue as they sped ahead to pop heights. It would be horribly unfair to diminish the output that followed but in a lot of ways, Prefab Sprout begins and end for me on “Steve McQueen.” McAloon’s writing had much more in common with Brill Building tunesmiths than the indie or top 40 crowd - he was intent on writing timeless music and his later efforts required the trappings of more elaborate instrumentation and could at times be a little “soft” for me and veer into Broadway territory. Here, he had a disc filled to the brim with amazing material (many of the songs were written in 1979 long before their debut) that Dolby helped gloss up but not to the point of losing their basic undeniable charm. As much as I love the record, there was a part of me that always wondered what it would sound like stripped down - just the very essence of Paddy and his acoustic. It took over two decades, but we finally get to find out.

You should certainly give a listen as the songs take on a different life and some arrangements are even altered in the re-worked versions. Shockingly, a number of the key instrumental hooks return here as brilliant flashes of guitar where they were played in any fashion but on the originals. McAloon cannot return to his earlier simpler singing though and a funny thing happened: I missed the original recordings. Luckily this has a brilliant re-mastering by Dolby himself, lovingly updating the initial lush production for modern ears: A joy to hear all over again.

Credit: “Original Photography and hand tinting John Warwick, Original Design by East Orange. ”

Any signs of creative interference in the design process by the artist? None and McAloon took his role very seriously in the early days as the songwriter and leaving the other components to those that knew best. Its how he got Dolby involved in the first place.

Does the look fit the sound? It does but it is also horribly dated in an odd way. The hand-tinted cover photo with the band and a triumph motorcycle – the ride of choice for tragic young heroes – in the country fog is perfect in showcasing the rough-hewn group and the romance inherent in their music. Unfortunately it is topped by a blue and pink infused paper (soooo 80s) and pink simple typography. While it’s nice to only credit the original iconic imagery, the folks doing the work on the re-issue have done a wonderful job of holding true to the initial feel while enhancing the visual experience. Great photos and enlightening text (indented which I always consider a crime against layout) and pull quotes of lyrics that hit it right on the head every time serve to build layers of information much in the way the songs within have been formed. The washed out nature of some of the treatments echoes the fog on the cover and also serves to give off the appropriate sense of mystery about the band. Included are some brilliant little touches; my favorite being naming disc one “Steve” and disc two “McQueen.” The final result is just what you want in a re-issue: all the joys of the original with an enhanced experience for the consumer.

Final score (out of 10): 5.0 original and 6.5 for re-issue (9.5 for the music)

 Send to a Friend