Sqwink Album Art Blog

If your design-tastes are anything like mine, you’d enjoy the delights of an album cover that is tantalizing, provocative or at least visually-stimulating. At first glance, the Album Cover Art for Yours Truly, Angry Mob ticks none of the right boxes - and you can’t help feeling let down.

Image 1 shows the new Kaiser album cover in all it’s ‘Duo-Tone Glory’. My first impression of this CD Sleeve was ‘is that all they could come up with?’. Yeah, I thought there’s a sense of ‘Britishness‘ all over it, yet I felt is lacked real substance.

Being an indie-Rock band (or some may claim Post-punk revival band), the Kaiser Chiefs second high-street album should definitely be popular, but a major percentage of this derives directly from the visual representation of their music, sound or style. So naturally, I’d think that the album ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’ would propagate an interesting or visually -stimulating design offering. In my opinion, ‘Employment‘ (image 2) was quite an original design concept, albeit uninvolved. It helped propel the Kaisers into super-stardom, whereby the Cover Art defined the indie-rock Jounré. I didn’t think the new cover had any real concept, until recently…

Before I started writing this review, I constantly peered at the new album sleeve - looking at the typeface style, color and photography. Even though the cover is a relatively simple one, I found that there was a hidden quality within it..an almost subliminal serperiority. I found that the real ‘force’ behind this design is found in the glaring eyes of Kaiser Chiefs singer, Ricky Wilson.

This glare, or stare if you like, is what actually not only sums-up the Kaiser music-style, but the very title of the album ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’. It is this what holds the key to the delivery of the design styling, and as mentioned, the sense of Britishness.

In conclusion, I think there is more to this design than meets the eye. The album art looks like its taken 10 minutes to knock-up - but you don’t actually know how long the journey was to get to that point. After careful review, I think its a fair, not brilliant design, but it does capture a slice of the British music scene. If I were to give it marks out of 10? A six would do it.

>>Review by Andrew Kelsall, Sqwink

If your design-tastes are anything like mine, you’d enjoy the delights of an album cover that is tantalizing, provocative or at least visually-stimulating. At first glance, the Album Cover Art for Yours Truly, Angry Mob ticks none of the right boxes - and you can’t help feeling let down.

Image 1 shows the new Kaiser album cover in all it’s ‘Duo-Tone Glory’. My first impression of this CD Sleeve was ‘is that all they could come up with?’. Yeah, I thought there’s a sense of ‘Britishness‘ all over it, yet I felt is lacked real substance.

Being an indie-Rock band (or some may claim Post-punk revival band), the Kaiser Chiefs second high-street album should definitely be popular, but a major percentage of this derives directly from the visual representation of their music, sound or style. So naturally, I’d think that the album ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’ would propagate an interesting or visually -stimulating design offering. In my opinion, ‘Employment‘ (image 2) was quite an original design concept, albeit uninvolved. It helped propel the Kaisers into super-stardom, whereby the Cover Art defined the indie-rock Jounré. I didn’t think the new cover had any real concept, until recently…

Before I started writing this review, I constantly peered at the new album sleeve - looking at the typeface style, color and photography. Even though the cover is a relatively simple one, I found that there was a hidden quality within it..an almost subliminal serperiority. I found that the real ‘force’ behind this design is found in the glaring eyes of Kaiser Chiefs singer, Ricky Wilson.

This glare, or stare if you like, is what actually not only sums-up the Kaiser music-style, but the very title of the album ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’. It is this what holds the key to the delivery of the design styling, and as mentioned, the sense of Britishness.

In conclusion, I think there is more to this design than meets the eye. The album art looks like its taken 10 minutes to knock-up - but you don’t actually know how long the journey was to get to that point. After careful review, I think its a fair, not brilliant design, but it does capture a slice of the British music scene. If I were to give it marks out of 10? A six would do it.

>>Review by Andrew Kelsall, Sqwink