Cover Our Tracks

You’ve probably seen them too, while flipping through bins at the library sale or the Salvation Army: album covers that have been altered in some way.

Though he’s not particularly known for album covers, he did take that iconic picture of Andrew W.K. with a bloody nose. Party! 

My interview with the prolific and inimitable collagist Lou Beach.

James Marsh’s vivid, dreamlike covers for Talk Talk‘s discography turn up on list after list of Best Album Covers. Their appeal is timeless: nearly thirty years on — unlike so many great covers of that era — Marsh’s images don’t seem dated.

Viewed from our age of text boxes, snap-to-grid anchor points, and digital thumbnails, the hand-drawn, lushly colored, shape-shifting forms of Bob Pepper’s illustrations seem to epitomize a lost epoch.