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:
Santogold “s/t”
Is it worth listening to no matter what it looks like? Santogold brings her update on Missing Persons style new wave straight at you - leading the record off with the single “L.E.S. Artistes” and never looking back. Often incorrectly lumped in with hip hop and r+b centric female singers, Santi White’s songs (often co-written by John Hill who has followed her from their ska past) serve as the likely stepping stone from her albums fronting Stiffed and her previous A&R work for Epic. The clipped drums spin into big 80’s style choruses, chugged along by the jittery guitar work perfected by The English Beat and White’s stylized hiccupy vocals. “You’ll Find A Way” ups the ante with layered vocals and guitar crunch. “Shove It” has a confrontational lyric, but treats everything but the vocals with the classic dub reverb to make that beloved spooky backing. It also reveals the albums true strength in its drums and programming - keeping things ass shaking no matter the pace. “Say Aha” consists primarily of non-words, but you barely notice as it hops along until the reggae break where White’s vocals are stretched a little too thin. Luckily some surf rock guitar comes to the salvation.
“Creator” bares the imprint of Switch and Fred Nasty’s production, and if heard alone might paint Santogold in line with MIA due to her loopy rap and accented vocals treated to digital clips. Don’t be fooled. Followed by the weak, Siouxsie fronting No Doubt, crawl of “My Superman” the disc takes a break from it’s frantic pace. The pedestrian new wave churn of “Lights Out” and the slow creep of “Starstuck” and dubby wash of “Unstoppable” all bring back heavy memories of 80’s record collections. “I’m A Lady” carries a Pixies “Here Comes My Man” vibe merged with a glossy pop chorus. The noticeable influence shows that the disc has run out of ideas or fresh reinventions (really what we are treading in here) and makes one long for the day when Santogold matches the power in the first few songs for an entire album.
Credit: “Art and Design: Isabelle Lumpkin, Design Layout: Amanda Chiu”
Any signs of creative interference in the design process by the artist? No. This seems to relate closely to the work Lumpkin did during her Woodstock photography residency.
Does the look fit the sound? It does in tapping into an underground new wave vibe. I do wonder if the low fi presentation doesn’t hamper the glossy power of some of the music. The fact that this can be found in virtually any record selling avenue tells me not to worry about it (but worrying is what I do.) Two major pluses in the packaging is the actual use of placing/pouring gold glitter over a photograph in order to get the desired effect - rather than digitally rendering it. Leaving in the time/date stamp adds to the feel. With White giving you a challenging gaze as shimmering gold runs amok from her pipes, you can gain insight into the music by virtue of her hair dye and tank top as well. The second is the cut paper styled typography giving her nickname a unique treatment. Painstakingly worked out, one can see the additional decisions in using some positive and negative letterforms in the final solution on the cover.
When used again on the tracklisting on the back, it becomes a little too overbearing. I like the use of the cut out letters and showing the leftover negative section in theory; in practice it just becomes difficult to read and the blurry photograph does it little favors. The use of a display font for all of the text (Chinese Rocks I believe) creates a similar difficulty on the interior as well. The lack of contrast available in portions of the photo adds to the concern. Where it goes into simple mode it succeeds much more often. The continued background of the glitter pile, sparkling to the eye’s delight, and the black and white disc label showing four slightly different images of Santi and a giveaway ska-infected checkered background.
Lumpkin is gaining some notice in fine art quarters primarily for her photography, but she has dabbled in store windows to puppets and more or less any object /prop she can lay her hands on. With each Santogold release she does seem to be gaining a grasp of her collages. Chiu handled the design for the terrible “Bangers and Cash” record cover, which was also released on Downtown, so pray for her soul.
Final score (out of 10): 6.0 design, 7.0 for the music
“Lights out” makes me happy in all sorts of ways.
I feel the cover would be cooler if it came with its own little bag of glitter crack so you can take a glue stick and add some 3Dness to it.
“Glue your own CD art”-the new frontier
Oh, Fitsum, I respectfully disagree. MIA is a rapper; and Santogold is a singer. Dissimilar lyrics, blah, blah. They both have their place. Similar sound sometimes…but not so much that it causes confusion.
July 23, 2008 at 1:05 pmcouple really good tracks on this. took me a few listens to get into it, though.
July 23, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I read the design process for this cover a few months ago. the photo was something like the last shot of a very long and fruitless day, and a random one at that. also, the label’s marketeers were initially against the cover because it looked santogold was throwing up. sure, but she’s throwing up GOLD(en-ness). I’m not feeling the music (too close to sounding like a poorman’s MIA, even if she really isn’t) but the art is dope.
July 23, 2008 at 11:50 am