Stuff You Should Know: Creating the Perfect Album Cover

For all the talk about how mp3s and illegal downloading have killed the music industry, there’s one segment of the record business that’s been enjoying a bit of a resurgence over the past few years — vinyl LPs. Thanks in part to the inferior sound of mp3s and a yearning for the days when buying music was a physical experience, albums have been making a steady comeback while CD sales continue to drop and cassettes have all but vanished.

With that renewed interest in vinyl has, naturally, come a revival of the album cover as art. We’re certainly no experts in what goes into putting together a great album cover, so we enlisted the help of someone who is. Artist Wes Freed has been cranking out some of the most unique and visually stunning album covers for years now, most notably for the almighty Drive-By Truckers. As prolific as he is talented, he even paints a unique tour poster for nearly every stop of the band’s tours.

We asked Wes for some thoughts on what goes into creating the perfect album cover. Check out what he had to say, and then check out a gallery of some of our favorites from his vast portfolio of work. We think you’ll enjoy it.

But first, here are six things you should know about making the perfect album cover, according to Wes Freed:

You’re Selling the Music, Not Just Identifying It

A good record cover should get you to look at it and pay attention even if you’ve never heard, or heard of, the band. It’s a really good record cover when you buy it, take it home, and when you listen to and look at the art and the liner notes, booklet, etc, it all comes together as a total package. You’re glad you didn’t just download it, because you’d have missed so much.

It’s not a bad thing if it makes a good t-shirt design as well.

Strike a Balance

For album art, find a happy medium between taking yourself too seriously and treating everything like a joke. Either extreme can work in some cases, but those are the exceptions. And that’s not to say it shouldn’t be funny or melancholy, but I think if you spend time crafting your music, you should also put some effort into the visual end.

Remember the 80′s

You don’t want to ”date” yourself, by having imagery that’s gonna be so tied to the time the record was made that it distracts from the music (see: ”the 80′s”). Just try to imagine what it’s gonna look like, the size of a postage stamp, next to 5 stars in Rolling Stone.

Don’t Half Ass It

There’s more to it than just the front cover. When I’m working on a DBT record, it’s a lot more than a cover. There are booklet illustrations and cover, front and back cover, J-card (behind the disc), the disc itself and various other sundries.

Listen to the Band

I get the advance early mixes and just sit and listen. Take notes, just immerse my brain in the music and try to visualize each song. I also talk to the band about ideas they may have, what individual songs are really about, etc. The DBT record The Big To-Do was the easiest of any of theirs’ because they had established a circus/sideshow theme from the git, and that just opened up a world of possibilities, visually, for me to work with. I did more drawings for that record than any of the others, and it all just came so easily.

The absolute hardest part is coming up with the ”hook,” the basic idea that everything will be based on. In that case (The Big To-Do), and to a degree with Go-Go Boots (the Drive-By Truckers’ latest album), they supplied me with that in advance.

Once the dam is burst and the pictures come, that’s the gravy part.

Who Got It Right?

As far as my favorite album covers I could sit and stew ’til my goose came home and cooked the cows and still not deliver a top five that wouldn’t change next week. But, I’ve been thinking about this since you first asked, some time back, and Harvest by Neil Young still sticks in my mind as perfect. Doesn’t hurt that it’s one of my favorite records as well.

The same can be said, though, of The Ramones (the first record, you know what it looks like), The Clash – London Calling (with an obvious nod to Elvis).

When I was a kid, first getting into Rock n Roll, the covers were all I had to go on, other than the bits I’d read in Creem or Rolling Stone. I’d just flip through the racks and see what caught my eye. Wanted: The Outlaws, Waylon, Willie, Tompall & Jessi was an early favorite.

Looking back at my faves, it seems strange that most of them are either photos, or cut & paste graphics, or a combo, which is far removed from what I’ve been doing (with art director Lilla Hood) for DBT.

The ones I mentioned are from the way-back machine, but album art is making a huge comeback, along with the vinyl records it covers, and, to tell the truth, even the ones I don’t like still kick ass. Rock n Roll art goes through phases & stages (another great record) and I believe it is currently on an upswing.

To see more from Wes Freed, including some great art you can buy to pretty up that drab man cave of yours, check out his official website, wesfreed.com, or his official Facebook page.

And now, here’s a gallery of some our favorite stuff from Wes’s various work (click each image to see a larger version).