It's not often that your host Debuse will review mainstream pop culture works, either in literature or media, preferring to opine where his opinion is welcome. Sometimes, though, a popular work, however hyped and survalued, ever so much admired by the unthinking classes, retains a higher worth that has been overlooked even by the most simpering of pundits, requiring the sure hand of a critic to do it justice.
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| © 2015 Archipelagic Records |
Such is the case with last year's offering from Pop Search, purveyor of saccharine anthems often done more justice in cover versions by the pre-teen girls in the courtyards of your inner-city housing project. Referred to everywhere but the CD sleeve by the abbreviation "M.D.A." as if to spare the breath of generations of fans of this precocious legend, the slightly surreal "Mildewy Dinner Activates" is at odds with the otherwise Disneyesque self-presentation of this family-friendly ensemble. I'm sure the teen magazines have made much of the fact that the closest the title comes to reflecting the album content is that there is one song in this collection about a shower curtain, one about eating an evening meal, and one about setting up a new cellphone, if that's what passes for close reading in the pop music press these days. (It wouldn't pass muster in the independent poetry scene.)
I am not interested here in reviewing the music, however (which I have mostly heard from the cherubic mouths of your pre-teen neighbours). I bought my copy of this album--on vinyl, from one of the more pretentious local music stores that still offers this format--in order to hang the frankly inspired sleeve in a bare spot on my office wall. The disc itself I took to the park to play with my dog, until it was no longer any use even for that.
Take a look at this cover art a moment. Not for nothing do graphic designers complain of being the most unrecognised artists in the creative industries. (She is unnamed anywhere on this album's sleeve notes. I checked.) At first glance, it's a photograph as banal as a basket of potatoes. At first glance it's as original as every other pastel pink, princess-eye-catching piece of tat on the immature pop shelves. At first glance Pop Search's “logo” (if you can call the band's name dropped in a mid-century font a piece of design) is regulation-consistent with every previous album they've released.
Look again. With your brain as well as your eyes, this time.
The photograph, far from having been digitally saturated to produce the nauseating hue that barely stands before you today, was over-exposed. (Look closely at the glare on a decent-sized print of the sleeve, and you'll see that the wash-out happened in the studio.) The foodstuff sitting unexcitingly in front of our eyes, washed but otherwise unprepared, unseasoned, and not especially fresh, are root vegetables, that grow under the ground and whose colours are never meant for our eyes. I count at least four different varieties, but it's a bit hard to tell if there are more. Far from being a random scattering of potatoes in a box or kitchen counter, if you look closely these tubers have been deliberately posed in a wire basket to show as much variety and colour as possible in one shot.
I'm sure the band--or even the management keepers--didn't know what she was up to when she designed this cover, but someone give this graphic artist a raise!
Take a look at this cover art a moment. Not for nothing do graphic designers complain of being the most unrecognised artists in the creative industries. (She is unnamed anywhere on this album's sleeve notes. I checked.) At first glance, it's a photograph as banal as a basket of potatoes. At first glance it's as original as every other pastel pink, princess-eye-catching piece of tat on the immature pop shelves. At first glance Pop Search's “logo” (if you can call the band's name dropped in a mid-century font a piece of design) is regulation-consistent with every previous album they've released.
Look again. With your brain as well as your eyes, this time.
The photograph, far from having been digitally saturated to produce the nauseating hue that barely stands before you today, was over-exposed. (Look closely at the glare on a decent-sized print of the sleeve, and you'll see that the wash-out happened in the studio.) The foodstuff sitting unexcitingly in front of our eyes, washed but otherwise unprepared, unseasoned, and not especially fresh, are root vegetables, that grow under the ground and whose colours are never meant for our eyes. I count at least four different varieties, but it's a bit hard to tell if there are more. Far from being a random scattering of potatoes in a box or kitchen counter, if you look closely these tubers have been deliberately posed in a wire basket to show as much variety and colour as possible in one shot.
I'm sure the band--or even the management keepers--didn't know what she was up to when she designed this cover, but someone give this graphic artist a raise!
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