When trying to sell your new album, it’s vitally important NOT to have a cover which looks like it was assembled by a committee of kindergarten-age head trauma patients:
Never mind the shoddy presentation of this album, kids–this geezer is singing his love ballads in a NEW ACCENT! Hold on to your zippers, it’s gonna be a long night!
Seriously?
Oh, the prison tats on the little kid…I’m sure SOMEBODY thought that was CUTE. How cute is it? Well, let’s see what that bastion of accuracy Wikipedia has to say:
“The teardrop tattoo or tear tattoo is a symbolic tattoo that is placed underneath the eye. It has no fixed meaning but almost all meanings have some connection to prison. In the United States, it can mean the wearer has killed someone and the number of teardrops may indicate the number of killings. It can also indicate the number of years served in prison or the loss of a loved one or fellow gang member.
In at least one prison, (Oaxaca State) it indicates that the wearer was raped in prison.”
Ohhhhhh dear.
The WTF factor on this album art by Mew is so high that you might get a nosebleed while contemplating its awfulness. Fortunately for this band, the music itself does not choke the way the cover does.
And The Glass Handed Kits features music that sounds a bit like a more pop-oriented (and less uber-trippy) Gang Gang Dance. There’s an epic quality to many of the tracks on this record that are totally misrepresented by this violently awful cover. Though it has to be said, they manage to veer excruciatingly off into Neil Young “Harvest” territory at times…and do we really need anybody besides Neil Young warbling away like that? Er, not realllllly.
Ignore the cover and try to head toward the experimental pop portions of this Mew record. You can preview bits of all tracks at the Mew And The Glass Handed Kites Amazon page.
This totally bewildering album cover (ok, it’s the cover for a SINGLE, not a full-length album, but STILL…) come by way of the absolutely fabulous Bad Record Covers site, which has plenty of visual atrocities on display for your amusement. Behold:
This HAS to be some kind of ironic statement about the futility of war, right? Because otherwise it’s likely some kind of sick nationalistic drum beating exercise designed to whip people into a frenzy of…well, ok, settle down. It’s probably nothing aside from a really awful idea for a record jacket.
I hope.
The real point of all of this is to send you over to Bad Album Covers to get your fill of awfulness for the day. Some vinyl blogs might consider a site like this “the competition” but as far as Turntabling goes, there can NEVER be too many bad album cover detectives working out there. It’s a big, scary world filled with millions of intimidating discount record bins. Who could get through them all? Not me.
–Joe Wallace