Albums That Sound Like Their Covers (810 views)

[Baronessa]

Draw parallels between the general sonic aesthetic of albums you've heard and their covers with vivid descriptions, metaphorical imagery, random word association or whatever. Sometimes album covers are just a vibe, you know?

Classic examples:



Formless, barely a picture. Most importantly, scarlet noise.



Menacing, unfriendly, shambling in black tar.

[clem]

Emerson Lake & Palmer's "Love Beach" sounds exactly like the album cover looks, which is laughably cheesy and mostly-uninspired (they only did the album at all out of contract obligation and debt) but still well-assembled because Keith Emerson could make something acceptable out of nearly anything, and Greg's voice was at its peak at the time.


On a more positive note, I love basically everything about Nightwish's "Imaginaerum", and the album cover was what made me buy it on CD. I'd heard only one NW song prior (which was "Amaranth", and I did enjoy it in fairness), I was in HMV before my local branch closed down, and this album had just come out. The album cover was really detailed and magical, and I wanted to hear what the record sounded like. It matched really well.

['S]

Going to be predictable with my choice of artists but you'll see why I chose these covers anyway.



With this, you can still tell it's ABBA, it's commercial, but there's a satisfying depth and a sort of shadowy intense theatrics to it all. Both visually and sonically this is what ya get, why it's my favourite album as a whole from them.



Also this, while the graphics and text around the photo are routine mid-80s stuff, the photo is bleak, especially Moya there, and you can tell the setting is Irish af. I think the album sounds like that - the music does all have an Irish backdrop, a big chunk is a bleak echoey version of Clannad, but then Bono and a couple tracks complete with sax solos are shoehorned in as routine mid-80s stuff. Good job macalla means echo in English ig.