Grinderman - Grinderman 2 (2010)

Grinderman 2 is the second and final studio album by alternative rock band Grinderman, a side project of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released on Mute Records in the United Kingdom and ANTI- in the United States. Warren Ellis described the album as "like stoner rock meets Sly Stone via Amon Düül", "very diverse", and "psychedelic." Cover photography by Polly Borland.

Toro Y Moi - Underneath The Pine (2011)

Chaz Bundick: This girl who was interviewing me at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Texas last year gave me a pomelo for my birthday-- it's like this huge grapefruit that's the size of your head. I was like, "What is that?" I'd never seen one before. So, back at my hotel, I started playing around with it in my mouth and I took a picture in the bathroom mirror. I thought the fruit had a really cool texture, and it pretty much resembles female parts; you don't think of a pomelo as a feminine fruit until you peel apart the wedges. I liked that aspect because I had never really shown the almost-perverted side of me. I'm a big fan of the artist Parra, and the way he draws naked women is really cool to see. And I knew that I wanted a 1970s-looking record cover, something psychedelic and surreal. I was talking to a couple of artists to see if they could draw something for me but I ended up just messing with that photo in Photoshop until it looked like a drawing. So when I found that photo I immediately showed it to my label and [Carpark Records founder] Todd [Hyman]'s wife said that was gross. [laughs] I was like, "OK, that's a good sign."

Lou Reed - Transformer (1972)

This ghostly picture of music icon Lou Reed that became the cover of the Transformer album was an accident, according to photographer Mick Rock. He says, "Shot at Kings Cross Cinema. The Transformer Album Cover. It was Lou's first ever concert in Europe. When I showed him the contact sheets, he was particularly keen to see a print of this shot…I didn't notice the negative fall out of focus in the enlarger when I made the first test print, but the accident added another layer of mystery to the image. Lou knew immediately that this should be the cover for the album."

Andy Stott - Luxury Problems (2012)

AS: "When an album's finished, [Modern Love founder] Shlom Sviri tries to find an image that has the same sort of impact as the music. For this record, he came over to my house with this photo and was like, "I think I've got it!" It's just incredible, a perfect image. The lady's doing such a controlled dive, and it could quite easily go wrong. It represents the fine line between the point of control and being a mess."

Husker Du - Zen Arcade (1984)

The cover of Hüsker Dü's landmark 1984 album Zen Arcade features a hand-colored photo of a car-crushing yard. This location is down in the Pig's Eye Lake industrial area in Minneapolis (not sure if this is the exact address, but it's close to there).

Dinosaur Jr. - Farm (2009)

Marq Spusta ( http://www.marqspusta.com/ )is responsible for the hallucinatory, tree giant-laden cover for Dinosaur Jr.'s LP, Farm. Apparently, weed had nothing to do with it. "There's no drug reference! I've read that on blogs and even on Pitchfork, you guys said, "This cover will get you high." It cracked me up. I had to talk to the band to see if we were all getting high...and we're not. I guess people feel stoned when they look at it. A lot of my characters have a content mellowness with everything that lends itself to thinking about being stoned."

KMFDM + Aidan "Brute!" Hughes



KMFDM, an industrial rock band, has a long-standing relationship with commercial artist Aidan "Brute!" Hughes, who creates the artwork adorning almost all of the band's albums and singles, which has been called "one of rock music's most memorable cover art collections".
All of his work, which has been called "striking", shares a distinct visual style inspired by Golden Age comic artists, Russian Constructivists, Italian Futurists, and woodcut artists. In an interview with Sherwin, Hughes stated, "KMFDM have cornered the market in industrial post-modern angst and so my work reflects that." Hughes said that initially he based his work on the music, which caused "artistic block". Later, however, Konietzko gave him more freedom to use whatever themes he wished.

Suede - Suede (1993)

Before the album was released, the band half seriously considered titles of Half Dog, Animal Lover and I Think You Stink, all were rejected in favour of Suede.The gender-ambiguous cover art provoked some controversy in the press, prompting Anderson to comment, "I chose it because of the ambiguity of it, but mostly because of the beauty of it." The cover image of the androgynous kissing couple was taken from the 1991 book Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs edited by Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser. The photograph was taken by Tee Corinne and in its entirety shows a woman kissing an acquaintance in a wheelchair.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)

The album's iconic cover was a collaboration between Mangum and R.E.M.'s staff designer, Chris Bilheimer. The general design reflects the taste of Mangum: Bryan Poole said that "Mangum was always into that old-timey, magic, semi-circus, turn-of-the-century, penny arcade kind of imagery." One particular piece Mangum showed to Bilheimer was an old European postcard with an image of people bathing at a resort, which was then cropped and altered for the cover. Bilheimer also designed a broadsheet-style lyrics sheet for the album.

The Cure - Three Imaginary Boys (1979)

Maybe it was youthful exuberance or perhaps it was the fact that the band itself was not pulling all the strings, Three Imaginary Boys is not only a very strong debut. The Cure leader Robert Smith has voiced many times over his mixed feelings about the record, most notably the cover art (the three "representative" appliances on the cover, the lack of a real track listing -- all the songs are represented with arty type pictures -- and in no real order) and the production, which at times is admittedly a little muddy, but even that lends it a certain youthful charm.

The Roots - Things Fall Apart (1999)

For a limited time period, Things Fall Apart was made available with a choice of five different front covers. One such cover displays a photograph taken during a riot in the Civil Rights Movement era. In the stark black-and-white photo, riot police are seen chasing two black teenagers on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, 1961. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford-Stuyvesant#1960s_and_1970s )

(alternative covers)

CIP:
CD cover