It's quite shit. N'est-ce pas? Merde, indeed.
It reminds me a lot of this, actually.
Which is one of the most amazing and iconic album sleeves EVER. Hurts' cover is nowhere nearly as good.
After delivering epic beauty, eye catching photography and lovely, understated design elements for the sleeves of their first two singles, who decided it was a good idea to give the task of designing the album art to someone who needed practice learning Photoshop?
I'm sure the poorly designed sleeve won't ruin the listening "experience". However, it does soil Hurts' reputation for painstakingly developing their image and design "style". Perhaps they've run over budget and decided slap any old rubbish together. Or maybe our expectations are set too high.
Thanks to XO's Middle Eight and Popjustice for alerting us to the "lovely" cover art.
The following is the tracklisting for "Happiness" which will hit the "shops" on September 6.
1. Silver Lining
2. Wonderful Life
3. Blood, Tears & Gold
4. Sunday
5. Stay
6. Illuminated
7. Evelyn
8. Better Than Love
9. Devotion
10. Unspoken
11. The Water
Freemasons have been brought in to reswizzle Hurts' forthcoming single, "Wonderful Life", for dancefloor consumption. Here's the radio edit.
AMAZEBALLS!
And here's the now classic mix by the legendary Arthur Baker.
Rowr! That is rather impoverished. More damning than the Photoshop technique is the hamfisted typography, coupled with the complete elimination of chiaroscuro via the background gradient, and finally the overweening insensitivity of the overall composition. A first year graphic design student would get a C- for this.
ReplyDeleteyour blog post title is far superior to the album cover art. Everybody, Hurts. That should actually be the album title. I bow to your superior wit.
ReplyDelete@REVO - It certainly does not live up to the rest of artwork they've delivered. The logo is not to scale with the image. In fact, the image looks like two images merged together. Poorly executed.
ReplyDelete@Paul - Thank you. Service with a smile, you know. Glad you picked up on the subtlety. :)
ReplyDeleteThis album cover is desolate. Like a discarded still from 1930's magazine shoot.
ReplyDeleteOther than Arthur's remix, ALL OF THEM SUCK!!! I just got my hands on the Wonderful Life 7" and the Mantronix Remix is atrocious. I've already ranted about this on a previous post. Does Sony have ANY idea who their target audience is?
ReplyDeleteNo need to preach to the choir, but there was a reason PSB did so well among its audiences. Same could be said for Miss Gaga. Excellent remixes, 12" versions and notoriety. The people on this Hurts project need to go learn about Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons. The present state of this industry is no different than that time period (in ALL respects) and Hurts need to work in a club environment.Freemansons? So 8 years ago. Pony up the dough and hire Kaskade for that Top 40 Club Stormer. If Hurts flop out of the gate DOA, Sony will have NOBODY to blame but themselves. Bottom line is that Sony is completely out of touch.
Again, Kitsune may be Hurts' only lifeline at this point.